Alrighty, I've been unable to get a good speculation from anyone as to what's wrong with the CVT or "Honda Multimatic" in my '97 HX. The car is for personal use, so I don't race it, and I have limited mechanical experience. Though, I bought the car to gain some understanding about vehicles, so this is good... I guess. lol For those of you who don't know what a CVT is, it's a style of transmission that doesn't use gears. It doesn't have a torque converter, thus gives you a faster response than a standard 5 spd transmission as well as gas mileage. I didn't know this when I bought it two years ago. I like the style and how it drives and the flexibility that it gives me. However, this is rather annoying. :P

Anyway, the symptoms are as follows: high RPM from take off (3k-3.5k), hard time accelerating from 45-65 (Even going downhill onto the hi-way. It's like there's a wall there.), RPM jump 200-500 when cruising at speeds ranging from 35-45 mph, and light burnt smell of transmission fluid. Bare in mind that these symptoms fluctuate. It has it's good days and bad days. However, it hasn't effected mileage too badly and I still get 30/40 mpg.

I've taken it to two diagnostics shops. One guy said it probably needs a new torque converter. Soooo... I didn't go back to him since I told him it was a CVT. lol Cottman suggested a fluid change since the computer didn't kick back codes and that took care of it for two weeks. Honda said they couldn't open it, but now they say they can. ???

Six months ago I had seen something about CVTs losing their linear solenoids around this time, but at the same time it could just be the clutch.

Any thoughts from anyone would be cool. I'm having a lightly used CVT installed that's in good condition early next month. That way the vehicle will maintain some of it's value when I decide to sell it. If it gets pulled open there goes whatever was left over on this 172k+ engine. :P

 

I have a 98 HX which formerly had a CVT in it as well. It started to act funky, and finally bit the dust. So, I just went ahead and swapped the CVT for a manual. Apparently, the CVT will either run forever, or die fairly quickly. My car only had about 75k miles on it before the tranny gave up the ghost.

 

Yeah, that's what I've been hearing in general too. The previous owner never had to do any work on it and made sure to use Honda fuids and oils. I had at one point used X-brand transmission fluid and it seemed to make it worse. So I went back to Honda's stuff. We'll see how this new one works out. Hopefully it's like my current one and won't need any work on it for another 100k. Whether the ENGINE will last another 100k, I don't know. lol