is it possible to do it at home or is the hype true, that you need to go to the dealership to have it truely flushed out? cause i heard you need a special machine to pump the fluid out of the extra reserve area. or else you are only taking out 1/3 of the true amount.

 

is it an automatic or 5spd?

 

there are no 5spd for that year and model.

 

sorry bro, i am not that familiar with accords model/year combinations to know that type of information. but the hype is somewhat true, you can't get all of the old fluid out because some of it is housed in the torque converter on automatic transmission cars. you can do it at home, one of two ways. the easiest to the drain, refill it with new fluid, drive it around a while, then drain it again, and refill it once again. this will dilute the old fluid that was left in there, essentially displacing it. this is the easiest method but does not flush the ALL the fluid out, but it is effective.

another way, and some shops do it this way, is the unhook the transmission cooler lines and have the new fluid sucked by the return line(one taking fluid back into the transmission) and the other line going out being dumped into a container(you only need to unhook the return line, and let the old fluid come out of transmission cooler). its similar to how you would flush out your power steering system, you just wait until the fluid runs clean and looks new. that is why they have a flush machine to keep you running fluid through the transmission. depending upon how many miles you have, you should be able to get away with doin the first method. the second i personally would not do it at home(a little tricky if you run out of fluid, the only correct way to do this method is use the machine, but it can be done at home). if you have a lot of miles on your car and have never changed the fluid before, i would say take it to a shop and have them flush it out completely, then after that, change it at home by the drain/refill method.

it seems that honda recommends not to flush, so just do the drain refill method 2-3 times and you should be fine.

 

If the fluid is nice pink colored, doesn't smell burnt, etc, & you're just doing it for good maintenance, then just drain & fill. If there's any problems you can do several drain & fills like VPUPPY said.

I've heard people say that Honda doesn't recommend the flushing procedure, because most places use some kind of solvent/additive instead of just using Honda ATF.

 

nice thanks. i guess it would be so much easier to just take it to honda then. it basically ensures its done and done correctly. especially when the 01 accords auto tranny is known to have problems.