Last week we here in upstate NY had a pretty good snowstorm, a couple feet, nothing like in western NY, but enough :-)

Anyways, the next day my GF was going to run some errands, and she calls me at work saying her 2001 civ wouldn't move, Started up, but wouldn't move. Well I left work for alittle to check it out, and it would only go in reverse, and even then barely move. We both have 2001 civ's and both have warranties til 100k mi. With the car being in the road, and snow everywhere, we weren't able to get the car up the driveway, so Honda came it towed to the dealer free of charge.

Anyways, ended up being burnt tranny fluid, replaced and now it seems to be working great she tells me. I wish it wasn't so crappy out around here or I could have done it myself.

Regardless, why would the tranny fluid burn/gunk? We both had them changed about 40k miles ago, maybe they weren't done right. Would spinning wheels in snow do this or should this be a red flag?

Thanks, sorry this was so long.
Chriss

 

I heard from mechanic that spinning wheels in a snow is bad for automatic tranny. I'm not sure if he was talking about Honda transmissions only or about all automatic transmissions.

 

I would assume it to be all transmissions...Sounds kinda odd that changing the tranny fluid would make it all better....hmmmm

 

when you burn up the fluid you burn out all the friction additives in the ATF fluid. Which in turn changes its coefficient of friction. Since ATF fluid these days is sooo slippery the clutch packs have very tight clearances. When you burn up the fluid it causes the clutch packs to bind and lock when they arent supposed to. So it is perfectly acceptable for a tranny flush and fill to fix the problem. Though not always the case, it seems like he got lucky on this one.

 

where is the tranny plug on these cars? havn't actually looked, only paid attention to the oil plug last time i was down there.

 

On the bottom of the tranny?

j/k. The manuals have a plug on the side of the tranny, below where the pass. side driveshaft connects. It takes a 3/8" square drive, you remove it with just a rachet handle. I can't imagine the automatics are too much different.

 

the autos are on the pass. side of the tran. case as well, did it today, the plug had some shavings on it as well as some gunk, guess it was ready to be changed. Shifts are alot smoother now as well.