I bought a 1997 Honda Prelude from a private seller on auto-trader about 6 months ago. When I registered the vehicle the VIN# identifies it as the following:


1997 PRELUDE 2DR TYPESH 5 Speed Manual 49 States (KA) Emissions

I was unaware that the type SH was only for 5spd manuals... My lude has a 4 spd auto/manual tiptronic tranny tho. Are SH's tiptronic? I dont believe so... also that leads me to think that the owner before me changed the tranny or something, which he never said he did when I purchased it. I had a family friend who is a mechanic check it out before I purchased it and he said everything looked good. If my VINN recognizes it as an SH and SH's are only manual my tranny would have had to of been switched?

I discovered this because the last couple days my lude has been acting up and i think its the tranny. Ill push the gas and sometimes the RPM's increase but my car wont move and after a couple of seconds it will catch and take off. My first thought was possibly the clutch slipping but I dont have a manual, was wondering is there a clutch or something of that sort for tiptronic tranny's? Also when i start the car and put it into reverse or D4 it will tremble/studder/jerk and it sometimes does that driving around 3rd gear it seems. This has all started happening about 3 days ago only. Other than that it has had no problems.

So I guess my questions are... Was my tranny swapped out? and if so what is the possible problem/solution to the symptoms i have explained?

Thanks to all who reply with help and sorry for being such a noob.

 

All SH's are 5 spd manual. secondly 5th gen auto trannys blow.
you should swap a manual tranny back in..
goodluck

 

About how much is it going to cost me to get a 5spd back in there? Is it hard to find the Prelude 1997 manual tranny?

 

uhh... either your car was swapped to auto... or the person who sold the car to you swapped VINs with another prelude.

 

Well since you have an auto in there your luck. Having an SH motor you wouldn't be able to get anything other then an SH trans. But you might be able to find a used trans for 700+, Flywheel, master,slave, linkage, shifter ect.... might cost you 1200 bucks if you install it yourself.