Hello! I've been completely rebuilding an 88 ED3 civic and have replaced everything. It runs and drives great, but my gearbox wasn't shifting out of 1st in drive, and I discovered I don't have a shift (or lockup, not sure lol) solenoid. I began looking around, and I could find very minimal information on these things. The one that's stock on my car (28200 PL4 681) is nowhere to be found to buy anywhere. My transmission is ML4A.


I've been looking for weeks for an alternative, and havnt been able to find any info on if I can use other ones from other transmissions or not, so I thought I would come here for some info. Are there any other ones I can use for my trans?? Or if this is even the issue in the first place?

Let me know your thoughts and opinions, they are all valuable

 

Check the adjustment on the shift cable.
The only solenoid that model has is for the torque converter lockup. If you have any problems with that, start a new thread, but for what you describe, the cable is the first place to look. Remove the cover plate on the trans and check the position relative to the shifter position inside the car.

And do yourself a favor while you have the interior shifter cover off - clean the contacts inside the slider switch. The ECU looks for the transmission to be in D4 before it'll engage lockup. If the contact is bad or intermittent, it won't engage the solenoid and you'll think you have converter or thermostat issues.

 

So, found out that the lever connected to the transmission was bent and causing a terrible hard shift, where I had to litterally kick the throttle many times at 3500 rpm for it to engage next gear. This made the cable adjustments negligible