Not another bad Honda AT!
 

I have a '95 accord LX 2.2 I4, and it's given me nothing but trouble. I forgot to change the oil after I bought the car when it had about 163K, and a few months later it decided it didn't want one of its connecting rods anymore, and deposited it on the highway. So I do an engine swap with a junkyard motor, and it never gives me another problem. A few months later, I notice the dreaded gear slipping and lagging. It doesn't affect my driving too much, so I don't give it much thought. Now I'm home for spring break (I'm in college) and at this point my transmission will slip out of gear and not go back in after about 40 minutes of driving. So I installed a cooler in front of my A/C condenser to deal with the heat, and also flushed the system and replaced the DexIII with Honda ATF. When I try to drive it now, from being completely cold, it will take forever to go into drive, forever to shift from 1st to 2nd, and never go completely into gear, and it will make it into 3rd if I'm lucky. After going a mile down the road, I have to restart the car and keep it in 1st to make it a mile back.


TL;DR: Overheating automatic tranny, installed cooler, flushed fluid, car shifts so terribly it is useless now.


Any ideas? I was really hoping to keep this car until I had saved enough to buy something else, and I'd really not like to invest even more time and money into a car I'd just like to get rid of. Thanks!

welcome to the site. i think there are screens in the area of the shift solenoids,,i think you can remove the shift solenoids and clean the screens out,,,i am not 100 % positive on this,,only going from what i have read on this forum,,when my 96 trans went out i dropped 2400 bux on a new . rebuilt one,,more than the car is blue booked at,,but my mom gave me this car,,so i fixed it,,good luck.

I'd start by checking for transmission codes. There is a procedure in the common diy thread on top of this forum for checking engine codes. Pulling transmission codes is the same, except you count the D4 light flashes.

@PAhonda


I checked for codes and got a 15, and ran through the diagnostics in the repair manual on this site, and found no shorts or disconnections between the mainshaft speed sensor, and its terminal on the TCU.

Checked solenoids, fluid is full, made the throttle cable taught, checked the code it threw, is there anything else I can try before I have to get a new transmission?

Make sure the throttle cable has slight slack and is not banjo tight.

Did the D4 flash the code 15 or the check engine light?

Try resetting the ECU/TCU by puling the 7.5 amp backup/radio fuse in the engine bay fuse box for a minute. Try driving the car and see if the code(s) returns by rechecking for codes.

If code 15 returns, I'd lean towards replacing the mainshaft speed sensor. The shop manual only gives a resistance test on the sensor, but the output could still be wrong from the sensor.