Hows it going,
Well my brother just bought himself a 2000 prelude with the h22 motor automatic. He was excited on the deal so he brought it home, this past weekend he taken it in for smog it started acting weird. At full warm temp the car will accelerate but the tranny wont shift, except on cold starts you can get it to shift to 2nd gear but nothing more. Well I dropped the tranny and took a look at the hardcore parts and it needs a damm replacement. The gears were destroyed as PO i assume has abused the transmission.
I know a lot of accord owners have done h22 swaps keeping their stock tranny when their on a budget, however; im not converting his car to stick he just looking for a dd for school and something decent to take his girl out. Finding another lude is like looking for a needle in a haystack their scarce, or the owners just abused their cars too much that they dont bother with regular maintenance.
I know f-series and h-series have same tranny bolt pattern, now using an automatic from accord thats obd-1 will i have issues? If using a different tranny and keeping it automatic do i need to change ecu?

 

Im not sure about automatic trannys but I have heard alot that 5th gen auto trannys are really bad, they break and stuff.
Why did he get an AUTO prelude anyway? Why not 5spd.

 

You don't seem to know anything about engines, transmissions, Hondas, or just life in general so why don't you keep your ignorance to yourself? He already explained why his BROTHER is sticking with an automatic. Why don't you go watch The Faster and Furiouser now....

OP: Replace the ****'s with Prelude Power (no space)

 

While it's true that Serjey isn't the best source for information, his logic wasn't flawed.

OP, your brother has done a huge disservice to himself. The Sissy-Stick is a time bomb that will explode whenever it wants. What's the point of a daily driver if you can't drive it?

Now, if he only plans on keeping the car for another year, I'd say fix the transmission and keep on looking the part. However, if he wants to have this car any longer than that, a 5spd swap or selling it and just buying a 5spd are the only good options.

I really don't want to have to say "I told you so" later down the road.

 

Yeah unless there's a way to use an auto trans from a 4th gen or an accord but I don't know if it'll work with that triptronic shifter.

 

Well the reason he took it anyways was 1100 bucks for 2000 prelude with only 73k miles. PO is in military the vehicle broke down so he got himself a bike to get around, never bothered fixing it. I inspected the vehicle doing compression and leak down test motor still is strong, when I pulled the valve cover man it was pristine. To myself I thought something was wrong with the motor, but I did the test checked t-belt went through motor to check for leaks.It was well taken care of, because he couldn't drive it around every couple days he just start the car and let it warm up for few minutes. PO did mention about tranny issue and was assured tranny is strong that it might be just a sensor. I told him I can give him my accord which dont see light anymore I did an f20b swap, but cuz he busted his *** with 2 jobs he determined getting his own car.

 

Auto trannys hard to find. Good luc

 

OP this may not apply to you since you cracked the auto tranny open. On the slight thought that you may have put it back together again, I have a few suggestions and tips for the remainder of the Auto ludes out there.

OP stated the Tranny looked like it was raped (can you really eyeball tolences that have to be checked with a caliper?), tho that may have been the end of that tranny, and only a rebuild would ensure somesort of longevity your brother is looking for maybe long enough to get thru school. As stated in a post earlier, the fact is, this IS a ticking timebomb, and will/may lead to a accident in the worse case senario.

First of all for future reference, before you start swapping the transmissions make sure you don't have dextron filled up in the transmission. There is only one fluid that makes honda transmissions happy and thats Genuine Honda Fluids. Honda calls for premium formula ATF (SM page 3-2)

Next. Check the 8-9 TCM connections on the tranny. If you have a service manual look at 14-53 for their locations. I used to have an auto and I had a tuner work on it and the guy disconnected a few harnesses and forgot to hook them up again (it may have been unintentional.) For the women it is the huge chunck of metal on the passenger side of the car in the engine compartment. The sensors/solenoids are scattered all over the transmission housing.

Again for other auto-ludes, I looked up in my honda shop manual, a few questions, will the car operate in:
D4, D3, 2? Is there any flashing or non-functioning dashlights (D4)?
--Refer to chapter 14 and follow trouble shooting 14-54 to 58 for symtoms/DTC
--Electrical flow charts starts at 14-60 to 101.

Kronn's right, and no e-head here, but godslayer said it first, and both of us back him. Honda definitly dodged a huge recall with the Auto-preludes.

I have had a 30 month-long headache with the Auto to manual swap. I find myself scratching my head and saying "I paid 4500 parts and labor for this?(while deployed)" I have my engine being rebuilt and an empty engine bay for now. I'm pulling the used crap from ebay/salvage yards out and I'm installing new OEM parts while I wait.

I wished I bought my prelude as a 5speed manual to begin with.

I feel for ya brother. He'd make his money back and more if he'd parted it out instead of selling it in 4 or so years from now. If you got a code post it, it could help.