All things considered, I liked having the extra ratios available and
the speed of the shifts in and out of overdrive.
Our own Thomas Strange was kind enough to share his Spitfire with me
at the Loooong Race at Blackhawk Farms a couple of years back. It's
got an overdrive, and given the useable rev range of his car as it was
then set up (5,000 to 10,000 rpm, though I was a chicken and refused
to rev it over 8,500 or so), we zipped around Blackhawk using just
third and third overdrive. Very nice change, given the usual "stir
and wait" I'm used to with my standard non-OD Spitfire box.
I also had an overdrive on the GT6 I used in Midwestern Council's
time-trials "autocross" series. The GT6 box might be considered by
some to be "close ratio". Using a 3.27 rear end gear, I could use
mostly third and third-overdrive around Blackhawk. I liked the
overdrive and felt it was useful to be able to simply toggle in and
out of overdrive for certain upshifts and downshifts. Third-overdrive
is pretty much identical to fourth-direct, so it wasn't quite as
useful as it might have been, but it was still useful for that
third-direct to third-overdrive shift and the other way around.
However, shifting down from third-over to third direct under heavy braking
in a GT6 without a clutch-blip to smooth things out is, well, interesting.
Might not be quite so...interesting...in one of the TR cars.
Scott
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