Good evening -


I just purchased a 1993 Civic EX with an auto transmission. The car only has 65000 miles on it (believe it or not) but I am concerned with the way the transmission is behaving. The car was driven as a city car for its entire life and rarely taken on the highway.

The transmission shifts fine in higher gears but grabs onto 2nd hard whenaccelerating. I jerks the car a bit. You can control it by lightening up on the gas pedal before it shifts and then it is much smoother. The other iritating thing it does is a slight surge as the car comes to a stop. At about 5 MPH the car will jump up above 1 RPM and then back down suddenly causing the car to fall back quickly, sort of like hitting the brake too hard. It will only do this if I was already in 2nd gear before slowing down. It is not effecting the way the car drives and I am starting toget used to it, but was wondering whether there might be something that I could look into that might be causing this. I'd rather be proactive then replacing the entire tranny.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Many thanks.
Daniel

 

Bump...

Any ideas? I am mainly concerned with the surging as the car comes to a stop. I have given the car a tune-up (air filter, plugs, wires, PCV, seafoam, fuel filter, oil change, tran fluid change) and am still dealing with the surging issue.

After reading some other forums, the jerking between gears could be the tranny and might be harmless or could be the motor mounts. I will work on lightening up on the gas pedal.

Any help would be appreciated.
Daniel

 

cut copy and paste on erratic idling.
(if not in the top section on most needed troubleshooting - it should be)
applies unless there is a cel for eacv.

replace the vacuum hoses - cheaper;
if not already done so.
cannot tell bad hoses by looking.
that big one off of brake booster may be checkable (and probably ok)
cost is about 3 bucks

 

i have an auto 93 cx, and it does the exact same thing, the surg when stopping if it downshifting to first gear, as for the cause of it when accellerating i don't know, it doesnt bother me enough to care, cause if it blows then that means i order my D15B swap

basically if you resolve the hard shifting to second it should resolve the downshift issue too cause it is both caused from shifting from 1 to 2 an 2 to 1

 

Thanks for you help. It is nice to know that someone else's transmission performs in the same way and that it is more a trait of the transmission then a sign of bad things to come.

Question, what kind of gas mileage does your 93 get? The first tank I put in it got TERRIBLE mileage, like 22 MPG which is totally unacceptable. I have done a lot to tune the car up including a new fuel filter, plugs, wires, etc. I ran the engine a lot during this process plus during other times I was messing around with her (it's cold in Chicago!) so I won't have an accurate MPG until I am done with this tank and fill up again.

- Daniel

 

Hmmm for milage i don' really know an exact MPG figure that i get, but on a full tank ~$35cad with mostly partical city driving i get about 300km's to a tank. but i live by the motto "drive it like you stole it"

 

Yes, Honda trannys (at least on the cars) are very harsh in gear changes. Also, remember the Civic weighs around 2400 lbs., and any inertia the transmission carries has a big effect on the car. It's not a 3200 lbs. built like a compact tank Volkswagen. This can be seen when it shifts down to gear 1 while you brake, because there is a good deal of engine braking in that gear, and you can stop too quickly if you are not careful.

If your car is going KLUNK when you or it changes gear, that may be the motor mounts / torque stoppers. If you have any problems with old rubber dry rotting on your car you need to check the mounts, because chances are they may be bad too.