ItsaHonda

To bring everyone up to date, I have recently bought back my 96 Accord for a little of nothing with a possible bad transmission. I sold the car to a friend of the family a little over two years ago with just under 170,000 miles. I had owned the car since it had only 45,000 miles. The odometer currently reads 205,210. I kept the car fully maintained by the book and never had any problems with it whatsoever during the entire time I owned it. I changed the ATF fluid every 30k miles with Honda ATF only. The car was in tip top shape when I sold it, I even drove it 700 miles to New Orleans to deliver it to him. According to the owner, he has only had to replace the starter @ around 180k (which was original) and he had just recently had a new set of tires and brake pads installed. The CEL came on at 200k miles and the heat shield does rattle between 1500-2000 rpms. Otherwise, the car has had no issues until he was driving to school one morning last month (he lives in New Orleans and goes to school in Baton Rouge which is a 65 mile one way trip) when all of a sudden the car came out of gear and acted as if it were in neutral. He said the engine would just rev freely and the car wouldn't go. He pulled off of the highway and called for a tow truck to tow it back to the house. About two weeks later he got in it to try and move it from the street to the side of his house. He put it in gear and it responded and he was able to drive it forward around the house. He hasn't driven the car since then. Assuming that the transmission was shot, he decided to buy a new car (2008 Sentra) and called to ask me if I wanted to buy the car back for cheap. I accepted. So the car is currently sitting in my sister's backyard in New Orleans awaiting me to go pick it up pretty soon. My sister is a service advisor at a Honda dealership in New Orleans and has a tech. who would be willing to put a tranny in it on his own time (for a quoted price between $800-$1200) so that I could drive the car home. Otherwise, I'll just tow it down (I'm in Orlando, btw)

Do the symptoms spell a dead transmission? I asked him if he noticed any prior problems with shifting, etc. and he said not at all. This just happened out of nowhere. Has this happened to anyone else? I did later think about the possibility of low fluid (as the result of a busted line, gasket, etc.) but it didn't hit me to check the fluid level while I was in New Orleans. Ditto for a flashing D4 light... but I can have my sister check both. According to her, the car did move to and from the car dolly on it's own, so the transmission does engage for those short moves. She hasn't attempted to take the car on the road. When it left the owner on I-10, he said he had been driving it for about 15 minutes at 70 mph before it acted up. Any ideas?

Fuse

failed pump,bad converter,bad clutch packs all sorts of things.


What is the code you have a code if the d4 light is flashing. This will narrow it down.

strykernyc

You described everything that happened to my 96 accord.
The transmission if fk up lol. You will need a new transmission period.
$1200 is extremely cheap. What happen is when u drive the car for a little bit the transmission get hot or something like it and it just quit, the engine will rev normal but it just won't go anywhere. The exact, I mean exact same thing happen to me. Once u replaced the transmission the engine check light will go away (make sure they change both solenoid even if they are good).

ItsaHonda

Thank you for the replies, greatly appreciated.

As for the flashing D4 light, next time I talk to my sister, I'll ask her to go out and turn on the ignition to see if it's in fact flashing (the owner made no mention of it. When I asked him if there were any lights on the dash, he just said that the check engine light was on and had been since around the same time the car turned over 200k.) I have asked her to start the engine and let it run for at least 30-40 minutes every 2-3 days (or at least once a week) to keep it from just sitting (and keep the battery charged) think this is a good idea? If I get the car fixed up there, it will be likely be about another month or so. The car has already sat since the beginning of December.

The exact, I mean exact same thing happen to me.>>>

About how many miles were on the car when it happened? 205k is a lot of miles, but still seems a bit premature for a tranny failure, especially one that was so well maintained and driven. Honda ATF changed every 30k miles religiously, mostly all highway miles and I can literally count the times on one hand that I ever even took the car above 4,000 rpms. I don't know if 4th gens had the same unit, but I know of several that have gone 300k+ on the same transmission.

The guy did admit that he was a hard on the car (heavy foot) and he obviously got into some accidents with it (it didn't look like that when I had it!) It was obvious by the black fenders, ripped out door handles, etc. that he was rough with it... and I witnessed how he drives the new Sentra. But, he did keep up with the Mobil1 synthetic oil changes and he's 'only' put 35k miles on it.