Re: How to troubleshoot my overdrive?

Posted by Jay Faubion On 2008/7/17 20:54:25

My overdrive is now working (Praise the Lord).

I got a new (NOS they tell me) overdrive solenoid from Max Merritt. Although my old one was making clicking sounds I guess they were just not enough. It reminds me of the joke we told when I was a kid: "What does a ball point pen say? 'Click-Click'. What does a Japanese ball point pen say? 'Crick Crick'".

I guess mine had just been cricking.

In any case, when I got the replacement one home I thought it might be bad. I used jumper leads to connect the body of the solenoid to the POS Ground pole of my battery, and ran the NEG pole to the #4 terminal on the solenoid. Technically, that's the right thing to do. Nothing happened but sparking. The plunger stayed in place, making no attempt to move. I was pretty sure it was bad too, but then I tried something, and I'm sure glad I did. I set the jumper wires aside and used battery jumper cables to make the connections. CLICK! Obviously, the solenoid required heavy enough conductors to drive the plunger out. Jumper wires didn't cut it.

I installed it back into the car in about 20 minutes (I'm getting pretty good at this), and took it out on the county road where we live. The overdrive was working! I was amazed. That old '49 felt like my wife's Toyota Sienna van. The old noisy whine faded, I barely touched the gas pedal, and I was sailing along at 50 MPH. It was a pleasure to drive.

I'm going to drive it into work tomorrow, which is about 30 miles each way. I noticed a tendency for it to slip out of OD once in a while, but I can live with that. I'll see what else I notice tomorrow, but I'm sure a happy camper now.

Thank you to all who were such a help to me getting this done.

Jay