My daughter's car has a problem when the automatic transmission shifts from 1st to 2nd and from 2nd to 3rd. The shifts are hard enough to jerk your neck. There is no slippage noticable during shifts. Shifts from 3rd to 4th and to OD are smooth. Strangely, there are days when the transmission shifts smoothly up/down thru all gears. What's going on?

Thanks.

Drew

 

The first thing you should do is change the transmission fluid. Sometimes changing the fluid can solve problems like this.

Drain and refill several times to make sure you get all new fluid in there (some gets stuck in the torque converter when you try to drain it). I would drain and refill at least twice, maybe 3 times.

So you drain, refill, drive around the block a couple times, then let it cool down and drain and refill again.

The engine should be slightly warm when you drain, this helps the fluid drain out better.

There is a drain bolt on the passenger side of the transmission, towards the bottom of the side of the casing. Fill the transmission with a funnel through the dipstick hole. Check the level repeatedly during filling until the level of fluid is in the crosshatch of the dipstick end.

Use genuine Honda ATF only. It is sold by the quart at the dealership for around $6-7.

Drain/refill capacity is 2.9 quarts, so you need 2.9 quarts for each drain/refill.

To give you an idea of how much fluid gets trapped in the transmission and does not come out when you drain/refill, the actual capacity of the transmission is 6.2 quarts. That's a lot of fluid that doesn't get drained out... which is why you must drain/refill several times for the fluid change to be effective.