Late model Honda transmission reliability

Shuie · 07-21-2007, 07:21 PM

I just smoked the gearbox on my wife's 48k mile '01 Honda Civic. Im not exactly the Fast and Furious type and the trusted local transmission guy tells me he has been seeing an increasing number of Honda's with defective transmissions for the last few years. This is essentially my daily driver and the car is well maintained. And even if it wasn't, its a freaking honda civic with less than 50k miles on it. I expected this car to last 200k miles without major engine or tranny work, so I'm slightly aggravated that it now needs a complete transmission overhaul. What gives? Has anyone else experienced a similar issue with a late model Honda?

on2wheels52 · on2wheels52's Garage

I hope not. Just bought a similar vintage Accord for my kid's college car, am expecting four fairly trouble-free years.
Jim

many944s · 07-21-2007, 08:08 PM

No tranny issues, but the Brother in-laws Accord blew out a rod bearing around 100k miles. Thankfully, my wifes car that we were getting ready to phase out had the same motor (different harness, what a head ache) so after 3 days of hard work, my wife had a new car, and my brother in-laws car has a great motor in it. Honestly, I don't think you could pay me to buy a Honda!

-Nick

Joeaksa · 07-21-2007, 08:10 PM

My 91 accord has 230k with no issues. Agree about the new tranny's not lasting very long. My 2000 S-type shelled its gearbox at 71k, and Jag said "thats normal life for an auto gearbox these days. BS... and there is a class action lawsuit against them for it.

many944s · 07-21-2007, 08:16 PM

A class action suit against Jag.... What's the world coming to

Jays72T · 07-21-2007, 09:00 PM

My '01 Ody's died at 80K but Honda extended the warrenty a bit due to a lawsuit. MDX's, Accords, TL's and other models have troubles but don't think Civics.

sewell94 · 07-21-2007, 10:26 PM

Most of the honda auto trannys from 2000-2003 or so are are junk. As per the civic the orginal poster is asking about, I'm assuming its is a SOHC 1.7l engine, those have alot problems so honda tried to remedy it by a update to the transmission computer. If you replace it, make sure the update is done and you won't have to worry. The accords also have a similiar issues.

Nostril Cheese · 07-21-2007, 10:30 PM

I had a tech at a Honda dealer tell me there was no need to replace the transmission filter in a 98. This was after replacing the tranny under warranty.

Drew001 · 07-21-2007, 10:34 PM

I'm on my third Honda and all have been bulletproof.
'89 Civic had 140K once I sold it, '91 Civic had 103K and my old daily driver - a '99 Accord Coupe EX-L only has 26K on it, but I'm in the process of selling it since I don't drive it anymore and selling it will allow me to improve the Porsche.

If I had to buy another utilitarian car, I'd go Honda just because they've been so good to me in the past.
I really believe that Hondas are as reliable as anything else in that price range.

on2wheels52 · on2wheels52's Garage

Just to clairify, are we talking about auto or manual transmissions? Shuie said gearbox so I assumed stick, which is what my kid's Accord is. Probably not many Odyssey's w/o autos.
Jim

Joeaksa · 07-22-2007, 04:52 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by many944s
A class action suit against Jag.... What's the world coming to

When someone pays $60,000 for a car like a new S-type they expect the gearbox to last more than 4 years or 60,000 miles.

Jag/Ford has denied any issues and in-fact has been telling people (myself personally as well as many others) that "60,000 miles is normal overhaul time for an automatic gearbox" when they are lying through their teeth. The auto box on my 1969 XJ Jag had over 600,000 (no, not a typo) before being overhauled.

Hope they get their hat handed to them. It cost me $2700 to overhaul my tranny years before it should have happened.

Shuie · 07-22-2007, 05:23 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by on2wheels52
Just to clairify, are we talking about auto or manual transmissions? Shuie said gearbox so I assumed stick, which is what my kid's Accord is. Probably not many Odyssey's w/o autos.
Jim

No, its a 4 speed automatic.

Tobra · Tobra's Garage

My buddy had a 5 sp civic of that vintage that the transmission case had a flaw in the casting that caused it to pop out of gear. They fixed it once under warranty, 2nd time it started happening, they tried to tell him he was abusing it, so he traded it in, on another Honda. He has had very good luck with them save for that one car.

I have an integra sedan that I beat the heck out of, it is plenty involving and fast enough. 10 years and 140,000 trouble free miles.

p911dad · p911dad's Garage

We have about 10 Natural Gas powered Honda Civics in our fleet, and vary from 2001 thru 2005 model years. We have had several that needed new transmissions(automatic), all have under 50,000 miles. Other than that, they have been pretty good cars.

sketchers356 · 07-23-2007, 01:30 AM

Why do we care about auto boxes?

SPORTOMATIC BABY!!!!!11one

Shuie · 07:10 PM

$1933.65 to rebuild the entire tranny. Everything was gone. It just wore out at 48k miles. Mechanic says that the clutch packs all disintegrated and plugged the filter preventing the unit from building any pressure and working at all. He says he has seen this before, but only on cars with 100k+ miles. He is saving some of the disks for me so I'll post pictures when I get the car back.

sewell, do you have any more info on the computer fix? Was this a factory recall?

Wayne, I think there may be a market for a Honda tranny rebuild book

Dottore · 07-26-2007, 07:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Joeaksa

When someone pays $60,000 for a car like a new S-type they expect the gearbox to last more than 4 years or 60,000 miles.

Really? I don't know anyone who has ever bought a Jag and expected any part of it to last for more than 4 years or 60,000 miles. Or anything close to that!

My father bought Jag's when I was growing up, and we had a thousand stories about this or that or the other thing going wrong. One holiday we all had to chew chewing gum in the middle of the night at a gas station outside of Santa Fe so that we could patch this around a fuel line in the trunk that had sprung a leak.

Whenever my father was asked why he continued to buy Jaguars he'd say " If you owned one you would understand." But he certainly would never claim that it was because of the reliability. I remember one time that he tipped up at home with a brand new one, and the first thing he did was to take two bricks out of the garage and put them in the trunk. Why? Whenever he parked on a slope he would put these in front of the downhill wheels. And there was a reason for that. He once had one roll down a hill into the middle of a hardware store!

Shuie · 07-26-2007, 07:52 PM

Come on, guys. Go start your own freaking Jaguar thread

BRPORSCHE · 07-26-2007, 08:27 PM

wow, that's extremely low mileage for a Honda transmission I would think. Just normal driving sherman? You know since your Porschless and all....j.k.

jbripps · jbripps's Garage

Hi...didn't read all the posts...but wifey's odyssey '02 tranny started to go. I was out of warranty, and went to an indy. While it was there....I did some research and called Honda NA about the issue. Car only had 66K miles on it.

In a nutshell....they reimbursed 1/2 of the bill. Had I brought it directly to Honda, the entire repair would have been covered. I needed a rebuilt tranny.

BRING THE CAR TO THE DEALER AND OPEN A CLAIM WITH HONDA N.A. They may cover the repair.

Good luck,
J