Nissan Patrol Auto

Turk, I can remember reading an article somewhere on this same question and from memory it has to do with fuel consumption rather than transmission probs. Apparantly when o/drive is deselected you get better fuel consumption. I've never tried it, but your 'van does not seem to be overly heavy.
Mike

Turk
Very much my personal opinion and preference I have towed an 18ft Coromal round Aust in 05 with a 3lt auto patrol and was told the same both yes and no about using overdrive. I towed soley with O/D off as the car seemed to jump between 4and 5 to much for my liking.
I did 28000ks and returned 6.7 Klm per Litre so was pretty happy with that

Hi Turk,
Whilst I have the ULP 4.5 version in auto and have towed both a camper and more recently our Windsor Outback (17' tandem), I have tested with and without overdrive on, especially last year doing +25K around the country, and have found very little difference in overall consumption figures. I did however settle on o/d OFF as travelling was quite a bit smoother without the auto jumping up and down a notch. I was advised by my local Nissan service centre to do that if I found it changing too frequently.

Hi Turk,
The issue with towing in O/D with an auto has more to do with heat generated by the torque converter due to it’s slippage under load. The more load you put on a fluid coupling, the more it will slip and generate heat. Heat is what kills an auto transmission.
Towing with a Nissan auto should be ok if you can keep the converter locked because when it’s locked there isn’t anywhere near as much heat generated. Your transmission will lock it’s converter in 3rd and 4th at around 80km/h, depending on load, so if you can keep the converter locked there won’t be a heat issue, but under load you may have to be doing up to 100 to achieve this. If you can’t maintain enough speed to lock the converter then you should stay in 3rd.
There are a few things you can do to improve your auto’s towing ability, like fitting a shift kit or performance valve body, a manual lock up switch and running it with Castrol Transmax Z. All of these combined will give you a very capable transmission.

Overdrive is just that - a cruising gear NOT a towing gear. Don't risk it.

When we inadvertently left overdrive on the boost gauge jumped all over the place which was a worry until the trouble was pinpointed.