I posted this under general civic as well and haven't gotten much response, I thought I would give it a go here as well, and see if anyone had any ideas wth was going on.

97 accord 4 cylinder automatic.

My buddy knows I am a big honda guy, and his mother had a 97 accord, 4 cylilder automatic. It's a pretty nice vehicle, they take care of things, so i am pretty sure the car has been babied.

Anyway, he told me that tonight he barrowed the car, and when he got ready to use it, he shifted into reverse and instead of hopping into gear the car just whined, similar i suppose to what would happen when you were backing up in my civic. You know that whine sound it makes as the gear's spin up and slow down again.

But the car won't back up, and won't catch the gear. He said it happened a few times in the week he drove it, and said his mother experiences the same thing every once in a while. I wondered if anyone might be able to shed some light on that situation, or maybe has seen it happen to their civic or another car.

I kind of thought it might be the tranny, or a sensor somewhere, or even something minor, I just thought I would give it a shot here and see if someone had an idea. He said drive and the other gears work pretty well, and he checked with a tranny shop and they told him they don't make tranny rebuild kits for honda automatics, apparently, maybe that shop is on crack, I don't know.

If anyone has any ideas I would really love to get him some useful info. Thanks in advance, as always :-)

Stu

 

Well usually when a tranny loses reverse thats usually a sign that it is finished .... those guys at whatever tranny shop you went to are on crack, they do make rebuild kits for hondas... im not sure what they were thinking..

Anyway.. kinda stupid question here... did you check the tranny fluid to see if it was full? probably the first place id start if you didnt allready do it because that can cause you to lose gears sometimes....besides that losing gears usually means ur tranny is screwed .... buy hey, what do i know

 

I would hope he checked the fluid, but hey, I guess its worth asking, lol. I am going to check it out myself this week and see what the deal is. It's kind of random, i have never seen an automatic do that. Hope it's not gonna be a huge rebuild :-(

 

I work at a tranny shop and we see it all the time Import trannys are usually more expensive... If you want to you can pull the tranny pan (make sure you buy a new gasket first) and see if theres any metal or broken parts in it ....could also just pull the dipstick and smell it to see if its extremely burnt or something too. Lots of obvious stuff but lots of people look it over ..

 

I will check it out asap. Thanks for the suggestions!