99 Honda Accord, 4cyl automatic transmission. Purchased about 8 months ago from a professional acquaintance, in excellent (like new) condition, never had a single problem with it.

I was driving on the freeway today with my foot on the gas when suddenly my car started decelerating. I took my foot off and put it back on the gas a few times but it continued to decelerate at about the same speed as simply taking my foot off would normally decelerate. When I put my foot on the gas, the RPM gauge went up rapidly and the engine still revved but my car would not accelerate.

I pulled off onto the shoulder, turned the car off and called for help. Then decided to try the car again. It was off for absolutely no longer than 3 minutes, and when I turned it back on it was fine. Not wanting to take any chances with my daughter in the backseat, I took the next exit and waited for my family member to come and follow me home, now waiting for someone to come take a look at it but hoping I could get a head start on some possible answers here. What might be the problem?

Side note: I have noticed sometimes if I'm on the freeway for long periods of time (over an hour) sometimes the gas pedal will stop accelerating the car, but it has never decelerated before. When that happens, usually taking my foot off the gas for a few seconds then putting it back on will fix the problem. I'm assuming these could be related incidences. In the case of today, I had been on the freeway for only a few minutes, completely out of the ordinary for my car.

 

1. Have them check transmission fluid level. Also check other fluids while they are at it.

2. Check engine air filter.

3. Check the throttle cable movement while the gas pedal is pressed.

4. Is the Check Engine Light on or was it on anytime when this happened?

5. Even if the Check Engine Light is not on, you may want to get the car scanned for any pending trouble codes or existing codes.

 

Forgot to mention, no the check engine light was not on. Thank you for your response! The person coming to check my car mentioned it may need transmission fluid. If that's not it, I will ask him to check your other suggestions as well. I'm relieved to have somewhere to start the search at.

 

Spark plugs, spark plug wires, distributor cap and rotor are also other items to inspect.

Battery cables and alternator cables should be inspected.

Fuel pressure can also be checked if someone has the proper equipment.

 

Your transmission is going out, or the torque convertor, but the Accord of your year had know problems with the transmission. In fact, I just finished rebuilding an auto trans from a 2000 Accord.

Why do I say this? Because, you said you could depress the throttle, and see the rpms go up. This is telling me that the transmission is no longer connecting to the engine, in that the trans is slipping.

I think the going price around here to change out the transmission is around $2k.

 

So, if it was a problem with the transmission, wouldn't the car have been jerking or otherwise not running completely smoothly? Even as it was decelerating, it was doing so smoothly, and up until the incident and immediately after it ran fine as usual.

 

Nope.

Ever drove a car/truck with a manual transmission?

If so then you know that when you push the clutch pedal in, it moves the pressure plate off the clutch. Then the engine starts to decelerate [like approaching a stop sign, or red light.

While you have the clutch pedal pushed in you can still rev the engine, but the vehicle won't move, why, because the clutch is disengaged from the engine.

Your transmission has many clutches, the one I just built had 4 clutch drums with about 5 clutches in each drum for a total of 20 clutches. When these clutches start going bad they tend to start slipping like yours are doing now. The slipping usually gets worse until the trans won't go into any gear.



If I feel like it later on I will post pictures of the burned up clutches I just replaced, but right now I just finished getting everything back into the car, and I am TIRED.........lol.

 

Ok, here is the burnt clutches pic's as I promised.

Above in the pic is one new clutch, and one new steel.

Lower in the pic is a set of clutches, and steels from one drum. Can you tell the difference in the lower picture between the clutches, and the steels?

They are so far gone its hard to tell which was which.



My sons car, the one I'm working on, started doing exactly what yours was doing. He even called to ask me what was wrong. I told him, but, my son, being the idiot he is at times, drove it on a 12 hour round trip. He actually made it back home, and drove it from another two weeks before it gave up completely.

The funny thing was, and hopefully he learned his lesson [he is in his mid 30's so he isn't a kid], when he was bring the car to me [we live about 30 minutes from each other], it took him FOUR HOURS IN THE DRIVING RAIN to arrive with the car, with his girlfriend bitching right beside him in the passenger seat for the whole four hours........lol.

Sometimes you just gotta learn the hard way to take care of things BEFORE they get too far gone. He was very lucky I had a car to sell that I had just built the engine. I traded his Honda for my Altima.