Questions

Overdrive is like an additional gear on the manual transmission. The high gear on all older (maybe pre 1970?) stick shift transmissions is 1 to 1. When the overdrive engages the ratio becomes .73 to 1 for high gear (approximate, varies with transmission). When you drive the car you back off on the gas and the overdrive will engage automatically (assuming you have the overdrive cable/handle in the right position, which if I remember correctly is pulled out). Some modern stick transmissions come with a high gear that is less than 1 to 1,

Charlie Stephens
 
the neat thing about the over drive it gives you one extra gear in every gear, so , if you get the car to about 30 mph in any gear and let off the throttle the over drive will engauge and give you an up shift in that gear, so you have a 6 speed out of your 3 speed trans, the over drive will disengage at 25 mph and you will free wheel, dont park on a hill in gear with the over drive lever in the over drive position it will roll away, i would have been easier to use the truck trans with a different set of gears installed, they were already 4 speeds with a reverse
 
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