To begin I take my truck out of overdrive often, almost every time I drive it. Is it absolutely necessary, no. However, it fits my driving style, hence why I am starting a new thread on a common topic.

Last week I was driving to work and hit my OD button and nothing happened. I thought well that is odd. Got it to work one other time a day or so later, and finally it stopped working altogether. I hit the button, OD light does not come on and the truck does not come out of OD.

I did my due diligence and searched here, found the button issue to be a pretty common occurrence. So I dove into the steering column and took a look at the wires going to the OD button and whatnot. Everything looked good, no fraying or exposed wires. I thought the issue must be with wires inside the gear shift lever and it would be best if I just replaced the entire assembly. My local ford dealership had one, thankfully. I installed it and all was well during the first test drive. Light comes on OD is off, everything is working as it should. Cut to yesterday I am going out of town for an overnight trip a couple hours away. Lots of mountainous driving so I was glad to have my OD working again. Just to double check everything before taking off, I started the truck and hit the OD button while the truck was in park. Light came on as it should have. Put the truck in drive, light cuts out. Put the truck back in park, light flickers back on. Now I am very confused. Didn't have time to switch vehicles, so I just went for it. Now in it's current form the truck will come out of OD when I hit the button, but the light will not be on. The only time the light is on, is when the truck is in park. Thankfully the new shift lever makes the OD button work per say, but the light doesn't come on when in drive. I know the wires in there move around when shifting between gears, so I'm sure that is where my problem lies, but I don't have any idea of where to start with this. If anybody has any suggestions, send them my way please and thanks.

 

The smoking gun is that the light changes state with the movement of the brand-new gear shift lever you installed.

When you press "the OD button while the gear shift lever is in Park, the light comes on as it should have."

Then, when you "put the truck in drive, the light cuts out."

Shots fired.

The movement of the lever caused the light to change state.

That points to a wiring fault within the lever, or that is affected by the lever... such as when the wire needs to lengthen to compensate for the arc travel of the light at the end of the lever.

I've had the same thing happen to me.

I had a problem with the OD light, and just like you, I found that it was in the cheap chinsey sewing thread like wires in the shift lever.

But unlike you, I was too cheap to buy a new lever. So I figured out a way to repair the wiring in my OEM shift lever, put it all back together, and it worked PERFECTLY.

Park to Drive. Drive to Park. ON when engaged. OFF when disengaged. Doesn't matter whether in Drive or Park or Reverse or Neutral. Absolutely no problem.

Until I shifted to 1.

That was too far for how i had arranged the wiring exiting the lever into the column.

The arc travel of the light and button on the end of the lever exceeded the slack I had allowed for the wiring when I had reinstalled my otherwise repaired shift lever.

My repair didn't fail. Rather, another part of the wiring failed, by pulling apart when I manually shifted the lever to first gear.

At that point, I had to tuck my cheap tail between my legs and waddle over to my local Ford dealer in a different vehicle to pickup a new shift lever (since Ford doesn't service the wiring separately).

This time, I was more mindful of how much slack was needed to allow for the entire range of shift lever travel as I was dressing the wire harness in the column.

In my case, I suffered two faults in the same component, back to back.

The first fault was the design of the component wiring... well evidenced by the number of posts and threads you were able to find on the topic in search.

The second fault was my installation, after I repaired the first fault.

I suspect an installation issue with your second fault as well.

You'll need to pull out the new handle you installed to investigate.