Hey guys-

Friend of mine has a '99 lude (base, type-s correct? whatever's non-atts). It's an automatic.

I guess lately whenever he's applying moderate/full throttle and the rpms exceed about 4000, the transmission starts to slip and the rpms climb but the car does not accelerate any further. He has a check engine light but wanted to get some info on it before he took it in to the stealer. He has no obd-ii code reader so we don't know what the code(s) are yet.

The problem he describes sounds like a slipping clutch, thusly I am leaning towards the torque converter being the root of the issue. I wanted to get him to check the tranny fluid but he can't find the dip stick for it (guess the manual is unclear about that). Is there even an automatic tranny fluid dipstick on these cars?

Any information you guys have would be excellent, he needs to drive the car and can do so at low speeds/rpms where the problem doesn't occur, but I am worried about it getting worse and he will probably not get an appointment at the stealer til Friday or so.

Thanks!

 

Auto trannies on Preludes are notorious for failure. I hope he still has warranty on it. Auto trannies suck period, do a search on it.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Sticky Tires &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">Auto trannies on Preludes are notorious for failure. I hope he still has warranty on it. Auto trannies suck period, do a search on it. </TD></TR></TABLE>
yes i have my auto tranny out and i still dont know whats wrong with it people just tell me its something inside it didnt go past 1st gear and didnt stay in gear unless u rev the motor so tell him to do like me and convert it or sell it

 

damn..it sounds like the tranny..sorry to hear that bro..my wife's 98 lude's tranny went out at 95k miles. there was some slipping but mostly, when engaging into drive, it made a lotta noise and vibration. i knew it was the tranny. so we took it to the dealer (still covered under extended warranty) and the dealer replaced the old one with a reman unit.

honda really started messing up with making auto trannies starting with the 5th gen ludes and the last gen tls/accords. i heard that these failures (as small as they were compared to the number of GM trannies that fail, for example) caught Honda with such surprise that initially, they couldn't make the remans fast enough.

 

oh, and yeah, there is a dip stick for the auto tranny. it does not stick out like the engine dip stick, but look low where the tranny connects to the motor and you'll see the stick handle. check the fluid to see if it's not clear red in color. if you see any brown/black particles, chances are, the tranny is bad. but i doubt you'll see anything on the dipstick.

 

Sound like tranny problem for sure! I used to have '99 auto, the car was driving good and one day I start to hear grinding sound when driving. It got worse everyday. Next thing I know it slipped, exactly like you describe. From when the first symptom appeared to when my tranny completely failed was happened within a week. I swapped to 5 speed and now I 'm a happy man

 

Thanks for the input guys, I will pass it along!

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by xbn83 &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">From when the first symptom appeared to when my tranny completely failed was happened within a week. I swapped to 5 speed and now I 'm a happy man </TD></TR></TABLE>

amen