At 70mph in 5th(m86) the 4.17 gives me ~2700rpms, but that is with 225/50/r17. A stock tire would be 225/45/17. I went up to give me slightly taller gears, but still 2800rpms is not too bad. LOL yeah the 4.41 would wind you out with the mg3 .81 5th gear.

 

This is something I never rulled out and I never heard of anyone actually doing it. It's almost time for a clutch so we'll see how well this new job works out maybe I'll throw one in when I do the clutch.

 

Depending on where you live, getting a used HHR manual transmission could be pretty easy.

 

It has nothing to do with building vehicles in North America and everything to to with cost cutting, poor engineering, and flawed designs.

You sound biased. Few and far between?? Almost every Odyssey that has ever rolled off the assembly line is on its 2nd or 3rd transmission. They all have the same design, they all are flawed, they all fail. It doesn't matter if its an Accord, MDX, TL, any of them. They are garbage transmissions, and they typically fail quickly and without notice, sometimes going from 95% fine to completely slipping in one trip of driving.

Almost every one that comes in has failed to the point where it slips horribly and shudders on acceleration, and it gets worse when hot. Typical codes are for torque converter lockup circuit (P0740) and typically a manufacturer specific transmission code.

Just had an '07 Odyssey in with a defective torque converter that causes shudder at lower RPM in O/D. Instead of replacing the converter (car is under extended warranty) Honda reflashed the PCM to make the shudder less noticeable. That is pathetic.

Honda is by far the worst in the industry. My 4T65E had 188K on it when I traded it in, and those were HARD miles behind the Supercharged 3.8 in a Grand Prix. Not one problem with it in 12 years. The reason 4L60E's fail is because people abuse them, tow heavy loads on the stock trans cooler, and don't change the fluid. If you use synthetic fluid and change it every 30K miles they will go damn near forever, because its not a flawed design like the Hondas. As for Chrysler, they have definitely had trans issues in the past, but I've seen many a Grand Caravan with 200K+ miles on the original trans. So thats hit and miss, but the newer ones are proving to be much more reliable.

I have seen these as well. In every case, Nissan denied warranty coverage.

Honda stopped making good cars in the early 90's. Everything since then has been overpriced crap.

 

4T65s are a solid box, very minimal repairs done, same goes for the 4T45

4L60s had problems with poorly heat treated reaction sun shells in the late 90s through mid 00's, and they also had problems with valve body castings in the same period causing TTC slip, mid to late 00's had lame forward sprags, and none of them like to get hot or dirty....they just spit out forward clutches when that happens.


All the 6 speeds are stout, 6T70/75 are rock solid except for the 07-10 35R wave plates.

2008-now 4L80/85 have been having torque converter clutch friction issues. Not a trans problem really, just the friction material in the TC delaminates.

F23s are all solid boxes except for the issue with 2007-2009 2nd synchros. 4.17 box and a quiafe are very high on my wish list.

 

I blew out 2 F23's with bent forks 2nd and 3rd synchro's,but I was also NLS'ing it lol.Nw that I stopped doing NLS.The current F23 is holding up to boost really well.Im 2007 btw.On another note Maven,what trans does a 2007 CTS have?5-speed auto.and do you know what engine the 2.8 is?RPO?and who the F makes it lol

 

Its got the French built 5L40. no real issues with them, but they are a bit noisy, they just whine, nothing you can do about it.

the 2.8 is called the LP1, its just a smaller version of the 3.6 LY7. Slightly underpowered, but a durable engine as long as you use good oil every 5k miles. GM engine.

 

Yeah I do notice it whines but it never worried me.And yeah it's slow as hell lol.Thanks mave!!

 

I finally dynoed my HHR tonight and put down 257whp/233tq. The 4.17 makes that power feel damn snappy. I wussed out and got the OBX LSD though a while back. I have almost 10k miles on it and its holding up fine...not that I am suggesting the OBX, just agreeing that an LSD is needed with those gears.

 

OBX can be made a decent piece for the money with some detail work.

 

Yeah... I broke it down and rebuilt it to make sure everything was oriented correctly as per a few write ups floating around out there. As others have noted mine also had the gears backwards. I also cleaned up all the raw edges...So far so good.

 

i agree, it is cost cutting that caused the poor quality vehicles, however it was right around the time they started making more vehicles in north america

a catastrophic failure is few and far between in an odyssey. i see them all the time, did 2 last week, clutches are thin and the filter is plugged causing oil starvation. and for the record, all honda automatics are a similar design, however the mdx is a newer design and it does differ quite a bit from the odyssey and cars (accord, tl, etc). it is however worse, and catastrophic failures are common. the 2nd clutch drum likes to weld itself together, ive had a number of those across my bench.

converter failures are common in all hondas, however its almost never the fault of the converter. typically a honda will come in with a p0740 code and the torque converter will show signs of over heating. what commonly happens is the slightest bit of pump wear can cause enough of a pressure loss at idle that the tcc valve doesnt get fully stroked. this causes 2 things, the first being the lockup clutch can start dragging at idle causing it to prematurly wear, and second, the valve being partly stroked blocks off converter charge stopping lube flow through the converter to the cooler. this problem can be stopped by either changing the tcc valve to an aftermarket one, or putting in a line to lube kit.

i agree, thats a little pathetic, but thats a dealer for ya. i have run across several bullitins for different models talking about reflashes for transmissions problems, converter probelsm are one of them on certain models

i still dont say honda is the worst. in the past 2 weeks ive had 3 hondas, 2 odysseys and a civic. the civic was a 230k km old 2002, the odysseys were both 2001s and had 150k km and 180 k km respectively. i have diagnosed 3 gm cars with 4t65e's in them in this time as well, they were between 120k km and 150k km, all had code p1811, max adapt, shift adapts were all at their max. all had exessive clutch clearance, worn out accumulators. again, not a catastrophic failure, worn out. ive got a 4l60e on my bench right now, its a 2005 blazer, no trailer hitch on it, stripped sunshell and leaking input drum. and i agree, chrysler has figured something out in the last 10 years with transmissions, the fwd seem to be pretty decent, the new 5 and 6 speeds i have seen very few of, just the old RE line thats great job insurance.

ive had 2 customers come back with a box of donuts thanking us because they got reimbursed, however yea, its hit and miss.

the civics are still decent cars till the early 2000s. the v6 stuff really isnt that great. im starting to see the early-mid 2000 civics more, however they are getting up there in age and miles now.

i still dont think hondas are worse than anything else out there. they do have their inherent problems, but so does everything else. out of the cars, crossovers and mini vans i dont see any more hondas than i do anything else. i would actually say i see more gm stuff, and see a lot of fords, hondas are really right on par with most of it. granted in my area we see trucks, domestic and asian imports. i talk to other shops half an hour away and they see hardley any domestic, its all german imports with a few asian imports. location has a lot to do with what you work on.