Hello everyone,

I'm pretty new to this forum seeing that I am in dire need of some guidance. So here's the story:

Was driving to pick up my brother from his school, everything felt fine as I normally start up my car. Drove like how it should be. So, as I got out of the school parking lot, something weird happened to the car that I have never felt before - out of nowhere, I was revving up to 4k and the car barely moved. It caught again and so I was like this is weird... drove it to a right turn, had to stop and so it happened again! Car revved up to 4k-5k and then it would move. Now I'm at a stop light and I am worried sh*tless that it's seriously going to happen again; and it does. What happens the third time is that I caught the gears a bit and so I had some momentum to move, but I was pretty much ROLLING while revving my engine and having other cars behind me honk at me. Managed to get into the gas station with some momentum from the rolling.

Shifted into reverse, car won't reverse, shifted into drive, car wouldn't drive forward. However, I waited for about 10 minutes and shifted again and it would catch the gear again. But, it would stop working again after I tried to drive a bit more (was really close to home so I didn't want to call a tow truck...) and well that's the story.

TL;DR: Car was revving really high, wouldn't catch gearing, happened 3 times and third time, the car didn't want to move anymore in Reverse or Drive.

So what I'm assuming is that my transmission life has ended OR solenoid is blown out OR torque converter is dun goofed. I was searching through Google and GOD DAMMIT Honda, this is a huge freaking problem to lots of people who bought this car. I know I shouldn't have bought a first generation of this model, but my friend sold it to me for so cheap and it was still in pristine condition when she sold it to me.

The car is currently at 165xxx miles and so I know there is a lot more life to this Civic if the transmission didn't crap out on me.

So, what I want to try to figure out is that, should I buy a 04-05 transmission and do a complete swap with it? Should I do it on my own or should I pay a shop to do it?? I just want to fix my Civic and drive it again, but if it costs more than $1500+ to do it... I don't think it's going to be worth it to me.

How would I be able to diagnose the problem to be a faulty transmission? or would you guys know that this is already a faulty transmission? I was thinking about draining the tranny fluid and pouring new one in and see if that would help. The color still looks red and doesn't smell burnt, but I'm not sure if the magnet caught metal fragments...

Please let me know your input and thoughts.

I would really appreciate it.

Thank you,

Phooc

 

170 views and no input or thoughts? Am I missing out on something here?

Please let me know.

 

change fluid with honda dw1, cycle the transmission through the gears at operating temp, see if anything works it's way out.

are there any codes? if so, post them.

from what i read, it could need overhaul but to be sure, change the fluid and get codes from ecu.

i bought my daily driver 99 civic with a bad transmission and all i did was a 23 dollar trans fluid change and flush my coolant and it was good as new.

 

there are a lot of views from people interested in the same question. not everyone is a transmission expert on honda-tech.

i am an ase certified tech that worked at an aamco/independent/dealer shops for the last 10 years.

 

Humphrizzle, thank you for taking your time to answer this post.

I've been looking around on Google and come to the conclusion that it's most likely the same problem, burnt 2nd gear, clogged up internal filter (mesh is probably full of crud so tranny fluid cannot pass through resulting in loss of internal pressure that makes it not able to shift). Did some research on it and came across a few forumers that were gear heads who tore apart the entire transmission and diagnosed it.

I don't believe it is the transmission fluid, however, I should have tried it since it is the cheapest alternative. Thing is though, I made a purchase with a rebuilt transmission from a reputable shop and so I'm just going to have a buddy swap it.

It'll save me time and headache, but obviously won't save me money.

Here are the threads for those who are interested in this topic:
Link 1
Link 2

Haven't run a code check on it yet, but most likely I'm assuming that it's P0740 which is incorrect gear ratio which is transmission death.

Been reading up a lot on this BS transmission stuff so I've gained a bit of understanding of it. I'm just extremely pissed.

But on my end, I'd say I'm lucky for it to even last to 165xxx miles.

Thanks again, Humphrizzle.