1985 745t m46

Recently I've started experiencing some odd OD issues. Specifically the OD has a tendency to disengage entirely on its own with no apparent reason, and it also has a tendency to "lag" when I manually disengage it. Below are some specific situations and descriptions.

OD Disengages While Driving
I'll be cruising along around 75mph, the OD will disengage, and teh tach will suddenly jump up to fourth-no OD levels. The light goes off and the OD disengages just like I pressed teh button, but I didn't press anything.

OD Fails To Properly Disengage
I'll downshift either by pushing the stick into neutral for a moment (which used to kick it out of OD automatically) or by pressing the button. While it will sometimes downshift properly other times it just remains at the same level on the tach and I don't feel the OD go off. I'll then downshift to, say, third, upshift again, and the OD will suddenly disengage (if I'm out of OD) on its own. Its almost like its sticking on and just suddenly releasing at a later point on its own.

The wierdest part is that I can push the stick into nuetral with the OD on, downshift to third, to second, back to third, and all of a sudden the tach drops as the OD disengages OUT OF FOURTH GEAR! The only time I don't notice this is if I shift back into foruth with the OD on before it drops out.

So what's going on with my transmission? Am I totally killing my car by apparently driving it in third gear with the OD active?

BTW, I replaced the relay with one that I had that seems new and looks good and I'm still having this problem. The new one was slightly different than the old one in that the contacts on the new relay were silver, while the old ones were copperish. I felt the relay while this problem was happening last time and it felt a little hot at the base, but it didn't feel "burning my hand" hot like some other relays do when they have issues (headlight relay for instance).

Also, I tried moving the stick around to see if I could make it pop out of gear. The OD will stay active while its in fourth no matter how much I jiggle and push around the stick, so I'm assuming it isn't teh fourth gear lock thing.

Any help is greatly appreciated. I just don't want to start poking and prodding the solenoid if I don't have to, and I can't seem to pin this down.

Thanks,
rt