Howdy,

I have a 93 Civic 230,000 miles with an automatic transmission problem.

My "parked" (in park) Civic was rear ended by another car that was traveling about 10 mph. TheCivic was pushed forward about 5 feet judging from the skid marks. I noticed right away that the car was free wheeling as it had rolled back about 10 feet before coming to a stop. I fired it up and tried to put it in gear but all I got was a gear grinding sound whenever I tried to shift it into any gear. It's cool in park or neutral but it free wheels.

My guess is the mechanism (parking pawl)that holds the tranny in park has been sheared off and is hanging up in the tranny causing the grinding noise. That's just my theory right now. Am I looking at an expensive fix having to pull the tranny to replace or get at the problem? Any other ideas what may have happened here? Wishful thinking on the parking pawl thing as it sounds more serious. I'm not at all familiarwith auto trannies so any help would be appreciated.

 

Make sure the axles are still pushed fully into the transmission. The same thing will happen when an axle fails or disengages from the transmission.

 

why are you having to deal with this? the person who hit your parked car should be paying for the fix. it's not your problem. Take it to the dealer and have them give you an estimate and take it to the other person and have them pay up.

 

My son hit the car so it's my insurance.

 

that sucks lol..
anyway, no real way telling you know until you either take out tranny or tow it some where to get checked out. In my opinon, and this is me. I would just get another tranny and put it in there. cause if its a big problem or a minor problem a tranny shop is gonna charge a butt load to fix it. changing the tranny is a piece of cake. you could do it in an afternoon, besides 200,000 plus miles prob due for another one soon.

 

Is there an access panel anywhere on the tranny where I could get a view of the parking pawl to see if it's still intact? Looks like I'm going to have to get the Chilton's manual out.

I take it these trannies are pretty cheap in comparison toAmerican counterparts. I replaced a tranny in a Chrysler many years ago and the tranny alone was $1200.

 

The auto to manual conversion is fairly popular, there should be some perfectly good used automatics laying around. This is the kind of problem that can be fixed by mixing and matching a few parts rather than rebuilding the whole unit. I think the unit must be removed from the car and the whole case split open to see anything inside, there are no little panels. Speaking of the case, make sure it hasn't cracked.

But do check the axles first, the transmission may be OK after all.

 

once ya get the tranny out, youll need to split it apart. refer to your chilton for this step. its not hard. once its split apart you can see everything. as for the price of the tranny. i actuallly checked on one today for ya, cause i was at the junk yard and im a cool like that..lol...anyway it was 350 plus core so a little better then your 1200 american one lol.

 

I'll start by checking the axles tonight.

For $350 it might be worth getting it fixed as it rangreat before this accident. Might be an opportunity for my son to redeem himself.

 

rrp222,

I'm so sorry that it was your son who hit your car. I hope the junkyard tranny works out for you. But as mk378 says, check the axles first.