I bought my son a 1998 Honda Civic EX coupe recently. It has 163,000 miles on it. A previous owner disconnected the SRS harness at the instrument cluster and moved the CEL to an unused socket. I found this out when replacing light bulbs. My bad for not noticing that these lights failed to come on when the ignition is turned to the "on" position. I was just so excited to finally find an older Civic that wasn't a jalopy.

I read the codes and found that I need to replace the upstream O2 sensor and the knock sensor. There were also a couple of codes related to the transmission lock-up solenoid, but they haven't returned since I cleared the codes.

In my driving experience with the car, the transmission works fine, smooth shifting and no flaring (if I understand what flaring is: an noticeable increase in RPM between gear changes?). However, my son says that sometimes it takes a long time to go from 3 to 4. If I can ever have the car for a day, I might be able to experience what he's talking about, but the 16 year old with a brand new drivers license is hard to coral.

This car has a completely unknown service history. The ATF fluid is clear and red, but I suspect that if a previous owner was so neglectful of the CEL and SRS problems, they probably wouldn't have bothered buying Honda AFT fluid. I doubt it's the original fluid with the mileage being so high.

So here's my question: should I leave it alone or replace the fluid (over three drains and refills) with the Honda fluid? I've read up on some of the risks of messing with the fluid in high mileage vehicles.

Thoughts?

 

I used to work in a Firestone and at a Tire Kingdom before that and heard the same concern from several people in management. They always avoided transmission flushes on high mileage cars... but they would recommend the customer go to a transmission shop. They also always got frustrated when they would sell a flush and I would come tell them that we can't do the flush because we don't have the right kind of trans fluid in the shop.

It always irked me that people who'd been in the business for years or decades would sell a trans flush on a Honda or Audi knowing that we only had Dextron in the building. I'd suppose that many of the problems that people run into when changing fluid on high mileage vehicles may be the result of using the wrong fluid in the wrong application.

I also found this thread that may be helpful: ATF change in high mileage vehicles inquiry | ATF, Differential, Trans, Brakes, P/S | Bob Is The Oil Guy

 

honda automatics were always a problem they could never seem to build a bullet proof trans only engines.i would definitely drain and fill the engine that old wise tail only regards to trans machine flushes and older domestic cars. so definitely replace the transmission fluid.