Well the transmission, while it might be near the end of its life, seems to not have broken. We did not drive the car for several months while we prepared for fixing it. Then, when we were ready to fix him, we drove him again to pinpoint what we needed to do, and we could not reproduce the problem. Our code was a hydraulic failure code with the linear solenoid, so we took off the linear solenoid and found a clogged screen, which could be indicative of a bigger problem to come. Nonetheless, we blew out all the screens, drained and filled the tranny oil (a 1/3 of the total amount is all that comes out without a flushing machine), cleaned the magnetic drain plug of the gunk stuck to it, and drove it for a month and never had a problem again. Our family has now outgrown him with our 4th child on the way, and we have sold him.
As a side note, we do have a 5 speed 1998 Accord that we have acquired as a parts car that came with front end damage with 270,000 miles on it. It was suppose to be a parts car for our broken Accord for an auto to manual transmission conversion, but when the other Accord wasn't broken and it drove fine, we turned the parts car into our "truck" because our parts car "drove" fine! It now tows around a 1,000-2,000 trailer everyday and does so very reliably and efficiently, getting 25mpg +/-. So our conclusion is the F23A1 engines are great reliable engines, and the automatic transmissions are poorly designed.
Good luck with your Accord; we loved ours (the pretty immaculate one), and abuse our other one (the ugly one without a bumper and a tied down hood).
22nd Aug 2011, 01:54
Well the transmission, while it might be near the end of its life, seems to not have broken. We did not drive the car for several months while we prepared for fixing it. Then, when we were ready to fix him, we drove him again to pinpoint what we needed to do, and we could not reproduce the problem. Our code was a hydraulic failure code with the linear solenoid, so we took off the linear solenoid and found a clogged screen, which could be indicative of a bigger problem to come. Nonetheless, we blew out all the screens, drained and filled the tranny oil (a 1/3 of the total amount is all that comes out without a flushing machine), cleaned the magnetic drain plug of the gunk stuck to it, and drove it for a month and never had a problem again. Our family has now outgrown him with our 4th child on the way, and we have sold him.
As a side note, we do have a 5 speed 1998 Accord that we have acquired as a parts car that came with front end damage with 270,000 miles on it. It was suppose to be a parts car for our broken Accord for an auto to manual transmission conversion, but when the other Accord wasn't broken and it drove fine, we turned the parts car into our "truck" because our parts car "drove" fine! It now tows around a 1,000-2,000 trailer everyday and does so very reliably and efficiently, getting 25mpg +/-. So our conclusion is the F23A1 engines are great reliable engines, and the automatic transmissions are poorly designed.
Good luck with your Accord; we loved ours (the pretty immaculate one), and abuse our other one (the ugly one without a bumper and a tied down hood).