Originally Posted by allie03
Thanks for your help. This may be a dumb question but can you negotiate with shops? I mean, I don't have the technical expertise to really go out and find the transmission myself. Alternatively, I guess you can buy the transmission yourself and pay someone to put it in? I guess I should have them take a look at it and see what the problem is first. So ebay is a good place to look? Where else? How long does it usually take to get it? I can't go without a car for to long b/c I can't get to work. Thanks again!
Of course you can negotiate, you can negotiate with everything. It's always good to get multiple (I get more than 10 if it's major work) quotes and then play everyone off each other by calling them and saying how I got a price of XXX, can you meet it?
All you have to do is find an automatic from a 98-02 Accord V6. Make sure it has low miles. My tranny took like a week to come but I talked them into free shipping, so I can't complain. Ebay and junkyard search places like partstrain.com are good.
You don't have to not drive your car...Buy a transmission, keep it in your garage or at a friend's garage, and drive your car until the tranny slips so much that it's almost impossible to drive. My tranny lasted 30-40k miles from when it first started slipping and being noisy to when it stopped shifting into 1st and I had to start off in 2nd and manually shift. The not slipping into gear easily is actually a very early symptom...if you're not slipping on the 1-2 upshift yet then you should be good for a long time.