[Billyisgr8]

We are new 1999 Odyssey owners, and bought this van with something wrong in the tranny, but for $400.00 I couldn't pass the van up even though it had 256,000 kms on it. It has the bang into reverse after moving just a few feet, and sometimes grinding when reverse is engaged. We have broken motor mounts also, so some of what I feel is from those, but why it is engaging late is what I am going to try to figure out. It drives fine forward, only reverse was the problem that I could tell. I am going to take out the tranny next week, and take it apart. The tranny fluid was never changed since the last owners had it for 140,000 kms, it is very dark and burnt smelling. I expect plugged screens and worn clutches. Just waiting for the shop manual to arrive that explains abit about the tranny.

Do any of you know where reverse gets its pressure from, or what area's of the transmission would control reverse gear, and the not so quick engagement? Is it all controled in the reverse servo and probably just clogged or sticking valves causing this?

Where is the best place to buy a complete rebuild kit and parts from?

I am going to dissasemble everything and evaluate each part before ordering anything for it. Any tricks to get more fluid flow to the 3rd gear drum cause I have read abit about how it is lacking fluid flow?

How much does broken engine mounts play into shift linkage alignment and reverse gear engageing?

Thanks for any input or advice you might have

 

[Billyisgr8]

tranny is apart, 1st is fried black and has 3mm clearance yikes, 2nd and 3rd are looking new with good clearances within spec, and 4th has 1.2mm clearance and looks worn, but still nice golden brown. Reverse engagement selector has awfully rounded teeth, havn't found why reverse would let the gear disengage yet, maybe stroke of piston only allows shallow engagement. It looks as though the tranny was rebuilt before, not a factory torque converter, clutchs different on 1st gear, and horrible clearance for 1st, even though clutch pads on disks are still good thickness, so I think that 1st was replaced with new disks only, and a new end disk was not ordered with proper thicknes to get correct clearance, disks, and steels are black. This is all for now, havn't spent to much time on it other than this quick observation so far when I took it apart.

Great time to do the engine mounts now to, I am going to use silicone to fix the rear and side mounts that are broken. I have done silicone mounts before on a different vehicle,and as an example how they turned out, stock rubber mounts moved by hand 4mm, solid silicone moved 2 mm, so making it a solid mount of silicone, stiffened the mount up by approx half, which is much more flexible than using 3M window sealant which on a freinds engine mount was quite stiff, but good for hard racing. I liked the silicone for a daily driver car.


I have one question regarding the valve body. I see on the internet companies advertising modified vavle bodies in their rebuilt trannies, does anybody know what is being modified? Or which circuit this is normaly done on?

 

[Billyisgr8]

Tranny is together again, and working well. There is no valve body upgrade available that cobra transmissions knows about, he said there is nothing abvailable for it, so don't know what tranny shops are talking about. The bang into reverse, was probably many things together, screens full of crud, and rounded teeth on the reverse gears. I went cheap and only replaced the parts that were somewhat inexpensive. Some problem areas, that I found that I should have bought new parts for but didn't and one day may have to pull the tranny again to fix properly were, bearings spinning in the end cases from holes being out of spec, ok so my fix for 2 of these was to use .0015 and .002 shim stock and shim around the new bearings I installed and press it all together, will see how long this back yard low buck way works for. It saves me close to $600 for the tranny pieces that should have been bought, but I know that ultimetly I might have to buy these anyway next time if this doesn't work. And the reverse gear, I only bought the slider part, not the 4th gear with the reverse gear as part of it, I notice the transmission will get hung up on the rounded over teeth on the combined gearset, then slightly bang into gear somtimes. What I should have done, and am kicking myself for not thinking of it till after the tranny was installed again, was to grind a point back onto the reverse gear that was part of 4th, this would have let it engage more freely instead of hanging up on the rounded flattened teeth, then overcoming this resistance and engaging, ohwell next time I will fix it right. Just drove 1000 miles this weekend through mountains and the tranny shifts very smooth and was flawless. I am impressed with it. Back to the bang into reverse, I think next time the tranny has to come out, I am going to make the servo hole that fills the cavity behind the revese servo up a smaller diameter, so reverse doesn't engage so quicklly. When the teeth get rounded over, this is when it will slam into reverse after freeing itself from hanging up. Next time though. Another note, I have an old pipe wrench from 1890 that has the teeth spaced exactly the same as the spline spacing on the output shaft that I used for holding the shaft while torqueing down the end shaft nuts. I was impressed how well it works and I did not have to buy the special tool holder.