erm gears- how many ?

New guy again..


going to pick the landy series 3 up tonight... can someone eplain the embarrassing question of does it have 4 or 5 forward gears?

whats a fairy overdrive ?

sorry just dont want to look dumb in front of the old owner

4 forward gears as standard. Overdrive (as far as I'm aware, my 2A doesn't have it) gives you 2 more; 4th gear overdrive, and 5th gear.

Get some pics up when you've got her

Hi Biker1981, and welcome to the forum...

New to landies myself (series 3), and I don't have an overdrive myself, but have been doing a lot of reading up and following various threads on here and hope the following helps:-

Yup 4No forward gears (main gear stick - black), but you also have another lever (red knob on top) to select high ratio and low ratio which sort of doubles that to 8No in effect (although for normal driving on the road you will only use High Ratio)...
Then to confuse matters even further you have another lever (yellow knob) for 2wd or 4wd (use 2wd for normal road driving and 4wd for offroad or when conditions on road get tricky - eg ice and snow)...

The Fairey Overdrive is in effect another gearbox that increases the ratio of the top gears by about 28% to either increase your top end speed, or reduce the wear on the engine as you travel at your previous top speed in top gear (this is yet another smaller black lever to the driver side of the gearbox tunnel) - be warned though - only engage the overdrive in 3rd or 4th gears (it's either in or out - and remember to use the clutch) - mainly used as a sort of 5th gear, but can be used between 3rd and 4th if needed.

So in short - for normal road use you have high ratio 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and (4th +overdrive in) all using 2wd

Remember to disengage overdrive when coming back down from (4th + Overdrive) to 4th and if you just don't want to do any damage or make yourself look stupid just make sure it is in high ratio with overdrive out (preferably in 2wd) when you drive it away and just use the 4 main gears (don't worry about overdrive) until you get it home and can get properly acquainted with the new lady in your life - she will of course require an appropriate name!

Hope that helps? - not sure if it makes sense

you can use over drive in all gears i did for years never hurt it even towing,the gears and splines inside are as strong as the main gear box on a fairy overdrive,the biggest problem is finding a good one that high gear isnt pitted through age and use

Have a look a the sticky "whats all the levers for" in this section.