2001 Honda Civic Won’t Change Gears When Hot

Let’s get the bad news out of the quickly: your transmission’s shot. You are likely looking at, minimally, a rebuild, if there are pieces of the internals that can be saved, or, your better choice, replacing the whole unit.

Honestly, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to just nickel-and-dime this repair by trying to fix individual systems within the transmission. By the time you are finished replacing things, you will likely have replaced the entire transmission anyway. And, if you add up the amount you spend between kits and installation times, you could end up spending $4,500 or more to fix the entire transmission. Yes, it wouldn’t seem that big because you will be handling it piece-by-piece, but when you put all of the receipts in a pile, you will see that you’ve spent much more than you would have spend if you had had the transmission replaced.

Specifically, since there are likely somewhere around a million or more models of your particular vehicles out there in salvage yards or parts yards, you should be able to save money by finding a working transmission in a junker and having it pulled out and reinstalled in your Honda.

The savings over swapping in a remanufactured tranny will likely be more than $1,000.

Now, let’s look at the good news. We recently heard of a driver who picked up his first “new” car in more than 20 years. His old Mazda was shot and had 385,000 on the odometer. The “new” car is a 1989 Honda Accord with 450,000 miles on it that is running like a top. Your Honda has lots of life left.