Greetings community,

I have been having the following issue with the gears on my 1995 Honda Accord LX AT:

In "P" it goes into drive and in "N" it will be in reverse. When shifting to "D" or "R" they will not engage.

This has been occuring the last month after not using the car for several days.

There are no trouble codes and AT fluid is properly filled and I use genuine Honda ATF.

Car has just over 48K and its only used for work which is about 15 miles to/from home/work.

I am stumped on this and have no idea what might be happening. Once it gets out of this gear shift misalignment, it work fine.

Today I took the day off and lifted the front end of the car to check on a few things and with the AT shifter in park, i started the car and the front wheels were spinning (in drive).

The dash and shift lever gear indicators match fine

Any feedback will be appreciated.

 

The dash matching the shift selector has me confused since the signal for those dash lights come from the transmission (black plastic cover mounted on the side, in line with the internal selector shaft). Aside from that, sounds like there's a problem between the cable stays on the transmission and the selector in the cabin. I don't want to say the transmission end is loose bc your still selecting gears, but it could be the plate it mounts to on the transmission.

 

I decided to take a look at the cable connection on the transmission and effectively the wire was fully loose and the plate that holds the wire in place only had 1 bolt and it was loose as well.

After tightening everything, I testrd the car with the front on jackstands and still in neutral the wheels spin as being in drive.

I loosened the control wire from the gear selector **** and manually pushed the cable on the transmission end to engage all gears which proceeded normally. I shifted the control wire into neutral with the shift **** showing neutral on the dash and calibrated the wire to engage perfectly with the lock pin per the manual

Well, i tested it again and still get the wheels spinning in neutral.

Is this a possible symptom of a bad/stretched out control wire or what is causing this?

 

Let us know if you reproduced all the symptoms after realigning the cable and re-installing any missing hardwareon the mounting plate: it supposed to be all the way forward when the shift selector is in park.

Note: your wheels can spin in neutral, that's just resonance with a spinning motor. To be clear, that spinning can be stopped by holding the tire. If it is in drive you cannot hold the tire by hand.

You can use the selector body bleed procedure as a test: run through each position and apply throttle with the brakes pressed ( car doesn't move but selector body pressure increases and bleeds any air out).

 

Good morning,

Thank you for responding. I made sure 100% to get the control wire properly aligned in neutral and locking pin snapped in place perfectly.

I called a buddy mechanic and he confirmed that as you indicate the wheels can spin in neutral.

Well, I tested the car at home several times yesterday and drove it to work today and everything works fine.

Hopefully this is the end of the shifting issue

Thank you

Mark