Overdrive Failure

Kevin - Illinois

Kevin - Illinois

Senior Member
On my way to the Ducktail and Dean today on Indiana 26 and I heard a loud bang. The car stayed in gear and there were no other noises. When I looked under the car I saw no oil seeping. After a couple minutes I tried driving and the car ran and shifted fine, again no other noises. However it will not go into overdrive.

There is no cable to the overdrive and it's switched into overdrive and has been for the 6 years I've owed the car. I'm in a situation where I can't jack the car up to look. I will be in a better situation in the morning but I'd like to sleep tonight so I'm raising the question.

My question is, am I lucky and it just kicked out of overdrive or will I be driving back to northern Illinois at 45 mph...

1953 Ford Mainline
239 stock flathead
3 speed on the column with overdrive
The car is virtually stock

Thanks - Kevin :confused:
 
The symptoms sound like the sun/planetary gears are frozen. This occurs usually when the overdrive sections runs dry of oil. If the transmission doesn't go into overdrive and it never freewheels at any speed, I would say it is internal and will have to be pulled to repair.
 
I experienced an overdrive failure on the New York State Thruway due to a gear breakage in the overdrive unit, and it sounds like you may have a similar situation. The transmission and overdrive will have to come out for a rebuild, but you should be able to get home with the three speed.
 
The picture below is a 53, the length and location of the mount changed several times from 1950-1953.
 

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If you´re gearbox is shifting fine what you need is the R10 overdrive unit to repair what you have.
The R10 was used up into 70 if i get it right so should be good used parts available.
If you want to identify them R10 has 3 gears in the planetary and the bigbrother R11 has 4 gears.
 
The T85 R11 was a stronger box used in the Lincoln cars and later behind the FE type engines in F100 pickups. The car type are usually the T85 R11 C the later units were the T85 R11 N.

If the car didn't lock up the back wheels and screech to a stop then you are lucky. I've known two people that this has happened to. If there is no cable, it will have to be locked out manually. You won't want it to go into overdrive if something is wrong back in the OD section.

There is also a possibility that a gear tooth failed in the transmission gear section. If anything tries to get through meshed gears it's going to make a bang.
 
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