He'd obviously done this a few times before.

'Outrageous.' That's the only way to describe 440 cubic inches screaming through six closely spaced ratios. With our blessing, Rick nailed the throttle, and proceed to bang through all six ratios. With the TorqueFlite's wide gear ratio spreads, and the moderate ratio of the Gear Vendor, there is no overlap in ratios, with each intermediate range providing a useful gear split. There are now 6 forward speeds available: First, First Over, Second, Second Over, Third, and Third Over. It was time to put the Gear Vendors' unit through its paces in manual mode. With the overall gearing effect of the overdrive engaged, we now had an extra passing gear-automatically-into Second Over at a 28 percent higher road speed. It is quite similar to the J-type and is used in some heavy duty applications, like racing. J-type is the most common version and was used up through the 80's. The designations of A and D were for early overdrives. Without the Gear Vendors, top speed for grabbing an automatic kickdown had been about 65 mph. Here are some notes about the overdrive: Laycock OD's come in several varieties. Stabbing the throttle at speed, we got something we didn't expect, as the tranny kicked down to Second Over, and the Charger rocketed up to well over triple digits before shifting to Third Over. Remember, with the overall higher gearing effect of the overdrive in action, the run from 3,200-4,000 rpm is worth a 28 percent higher mph gain than with the direct drive ratio at work. This is just where it needed to be to work efficiently with our torque converter, yet leaving plenty of revs available should the need arise. RPM at a high speed cruise was down from 4,000, to just under 3,200 at 85 mph, and about 2,700 at 70 mph-perfect. Once on the open highway, in automatic mode, the overdrive is already on by the time you reach freeway speeds.

Laycock j type overdrive manual