Hello. I just bought a 1997 Accord recently. I really liked the car but found out after I got it home and already purchased it that it overheatsed. I took it to Honda and they found that my head gasket was blown and I had severe warping of the head, so much so that they recommended a full engine swap. Anyway, ever since I've had this car, the transmission seems to shift at the wrong times.

For example, when coming to a stop you can feel the transmission shift into first after it's supposed to. When going up a hill or coming out of a corner, any throttle makes the gear downshift quickly then go back up to the gear it was in. After I reach the peak of a hill and let off the accelerator, the transmission takes a few seconds to shift up, then another second to shift up again.

A relative of mine has a 95 Accord LX, and it does not do this. It also seems to bump a lot between gears. I had the ATF fluid changed, but I'm not sure the mechanic used Honda ATF. After the change, it seemed a lot better, but then the next day I drove it, it came back. The bump problems only seem to arise when the car is cold. Once I've been driving it for over 30 minutes it goes away. People over at honda-tech seem to think this is normal, but it's really odd to me and I really hope it's not normal because it's really annoying. Other people say it's a throttle cable, shift cable, not having genuine Honda ATF, and one guy said I might even need a rebuild.

Please help? Can anyone give me suggestions on what to do next? I was thinking a full flush and fill with genuine Honda ATF, but should I just take it to Honda and ask them to diagnose it? I'm hoping they'll know what's happening and not cost me a lot of money. I'm a teenager and this is my first car so I don't really have a lot of money to drop after the engine swap set me back $2k.

 

I'd check the adjustment of the cable that goes from the throttle to the tranny. (Not the same cable that comes from the shift lever). The control lever on the tranny should begin to move just exactly as the throttle begins to open.

Then you can drain/fill the tranny yourself, for just the cost of the fluid. It's easy.

 

So, I didn't quite know how to adjust them or the tolerances but I wiggled the throttle cable and cable to tranny around and when I didn't know what to do I closed the lid and decided I should just wait and have Honda look at them. But not for a few days. Then I got in my car a couple hours later and the shift problems are now 90% gone just from wiggling the wires around and messing with some levers with no objective. There's an occasional slight bump (nowhere near the bump I used to get) but I think I could get Honda to look at it for almost nothing considering I know what's causing the problem, I just don't know what to tighten or fix. Thank you for this advice, it's already a lot, lot, lot better but I wanna get it totally fixed so I will still have it looked at. Thank you so much. It made me very happy to see that it's not transmission damage.

 

Like Jim mentioned, changing the tranny fluid is pretty easy.

I bought my 97 Accord last summer and drained/refilled with Honda ATF fluid. You can only drain 3 qts at a time and refill ( I think the tranny actually holds 9 or 12 qts). So I drained, added 3 qts and repeated the process after about 1000 miles. Did this 3 times for a total of 9 qts, so think I got mostly new fluid in there now.