Going on a trip soon. Will drive 5 hours each way. The OD stops working after a while. Will it damage the car to drive in 4th most of the way?
Thanks,
Will

No, just take it easy. Also when the od is not working it can be caused by low gearbox oil, this is not a good thing as you could fry your tranny. it is a rare reason for failure of the od but it only takes a few minutes to check if you have oil in the gearbox.

If the transmission is the original one that came with the car, it would be a ZFHP22 (Gear shift pattern PRND321). This dosn't have an overdrive switch, but a lock-up torque converter. This tranny is entirely mechanical, without any wiring inputs at all.

It does have a kick-down cable that is connected to the throttle-cable-drum. Check that out and make sure it is connected properly and is not slack (though I dont think this would prevent it from going into lock-up mode).

Noel

No it won't hurt.

I towed a trailer with my Nissan Altima for 500 miles with the OD off - just uses a little more gas.

Yeah if it pops out of Over Drive you have a problem in the tranny I would think. Hell, if it can get there without any problems whatever.
--
92 240 2.3 L with a Borla! 103,000 Miles and More!!Go Team Grimace!!

...in which case you should avoid using reverse. had this happen in my '73 es. it wasn't immediately apparent what was going wrong. the light came on and off as a function of switch selection, but the switch is in parellel with the soloniod, so the light is not an absolute indication of o/d atate. if you are in forth and nothing happens when o/d is selected, it may be because its already engaged. in my case the thing worked okay until the machine warmed up a bit. i finally figured out that the soloniod was clogged with coagulated oil. i dissasembled it and changed the 'o' rings, which was a little cheaper (by about $260.00) than buying a new one....
good luck, hopefully your problem is similar to mine and not a faulty o/d unit.