bhayes82

Okay, for all you regretful automatic owners who want a bit more performance out there... there is a way to lock the transmission in first gear! Read on to see how Honda thinks US drivers are a bunch of pussies:

- When its pitch black outside... and i mean DARK, no parking lot lighting or anything... turn your headlights ON and the dash illumination as bright as it will go.

- Look down at your shifter, and below the "2" position you will see a VERY faint green glow... kinda looks like a "1", doesn't it!?

Hmmm! Well, to confirm my theory, i went over to Honda of Japan's website to see if the Japanese sedan (Civic Ferio) had first-gear lock position on the shifter. Nope! BUT... i also checked Honda of Germany's website... and guess what! A beautiful photo of the Civic (coupe, automatic) gauge cluster, and a gear selection indicator on the tach as follows: [ P - R - N - D4 - D3 - 2 - 1 ]. That's right, one extra position than the US versions. Those bastards!

Back to my theory... since my car is leased, i'm a bit apprehensive about taking things apart inside (especially considering my clumsy history with breaking things... heh)...

- I would be willing to BET MONEY that the only thing preventing US drivers from forcing the tranny in to 1st gear is a plastic or metal block after the position for "2". And with the help of our friend Mr. Dremel (or Mr. Knife, Mr. Chainsaw, Mr. 9mm Glock; whatever tool you choose), you can remove this block and shift ALL the way from P to 1.

Someone please confirm my theory before i destroy my car [IMG]i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif[/IMG]

Too late... i'm probably going out there with my leatherman knife as soon as i hit "post", lol...

And YES, i have proof.... here is the pic of the Euro automatic model's tach...
http://people.mn.mediaone.net/hayes2380/conspiracy.jpg

(for the detail view, i pretty much made the civic's tach from scratch in photoshop... if anyone wants the multi-layer .psd image -- so you can play with color overlays and glow effects to see how your gauges would look with indiglo or whatever color lights you can imagine... that is here): Windows (.zip) - Mac (.sit)
Note: Requires Adobe Photoshop 6.0 (5.x maybe...)

heh... samples of riced-out tachs: tach 1 - tach 2

have fun, and happy burning-out-your-tranny-in-1st-gear!

CivicVTec

iTrader: (9)

sweet

01CivicMike

The trans starts in first anyways, right??

Mike

waytooslow2

i took my interior apart..the center console and all...when i took apart the shift **** and surround isaw that the little peice of plastic that has the gears on it had a 1 but it was covered by plastic when you put it back together..i didnt think to see if it would go down to the 1 when i had it apart....too bad.....you dont need to put in 1 anyways just keep it floored till it redlines[IMG]i/expressions/face-icon-small-blush.gif[/IMG]

NeoMagus

what a bunch of crap. Who the hell cares anyway, if you got an automatic you shouldnt be racing a Civic in the first place

01civicboi

iTrader: (2)

holy crap that blue needle likes sweet

Grey

iTrader: (61)

Hey, good work! Now automatic owners might be able to actually get a little more performance out of their cars. I wonder if everything else is there to have the car start out in first gear? Someone should cut the metal and see it it'll work.

[IMG]i/expressions/beer_yum.gif[/IMG] to bhayes82

ScottieEX

someone should try it.. maybe just take off the transmissoin cover and see if its shiftable or anything.[IMG]i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif[/IMG]

nbpEMCivic

iTrader: (1)

actually guys...check out the pic of the guages he posted...it redlines at like 6200 RPM's

KUNZ

It's not good for tranny or the engine to drive in 1st or 2nd. You especially can't start in 1 switch to 2 and the d3 then d. Explain how this wouldn't hurt the car?

antidote11

WTF Neo ?? The only difference between a manual and an auto is the manual is maybe a second faster. Ooohhhh.....

It's all the driver my man...I drive an auto, and it ain't slow.

DannyK35

Who cares anyway, these cars are soooo freaking slow. I am really happy that I leased this piece of crap car b/c in April it's going right back to where it came from....

NeoMagus

LOL. I thought the same thing. Maybe you need to drive a stick 2k1.

Second faster, what watch are you using?

bhayes82

"it's not good for the engine or tranny to drive in 1st or 2nd..."

that's excellent news for my friend who just lost both 1st and 2nd gears in his '86 rx-7 turbo! ("hey hayes, watch this! i think i can FINALLY get the car going in 3rd!... [light turns green]... [THUNK...click...click]... [warning chimes, lots of flashy lights on dash]... awww... hold on, lemme try again!"... again... again... lol)

man, think of all the cars we could waste if all of us civic drivers could launch in 3rd gear!!! umm... wait...
the already short list of cars the civic can smoke would be down to the yugo. and a golf cart... and possibly a midget on a tricycle.

--- hehheh... ----

okay, my apologies for the lengthy sarcasm... but... KUNZ, you're a dork.

YES, it's bad to do 70 in second gear. and yes, it would be quite worse to do that in first [IMG]i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif[/IMG]

there ARE, however, benefits to having control over first gear. one benefit is when you're driving down a winding mountain road (or just one damn big hill on your way to work). using the engine to slow the car down prevents the brakes from overheating, saving them for something useful (like KUNZ running across the street right in front of me, lol). a second benefit is the performance. when you absolutely need every pony out of that whopping 1.6L (such as running away from a scissors-wielding mental-asylum-escapee on a segway scooter)... it would be kinda nice to force the engine to stay in 1st as long as you want it to (although i believe someone did point out that even when it's in D, it waits until redline to shift in to 2nd if you punch the pedal down). true, indeed; but doesn't it FEEL like you're going faster when YOU shove the shifter into "2"? [IMG]i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif[/IMG]

this is what honda calls "sequential sportshift" in the prelude and the acura CL/TL. (even though the TL's "sportshift" won't let you DOWNSHIFT in to 1st, and it automatically upshifts to 2nd if you get too close to redline; it still has a [1], [2], [3]... gear positions in the shift gate which DO hold the tranny in that selected gear)

bottom line: as long as blue lights, spoilers, and vtec stickers make the civic faster, so does manually shifting an auto from 1st to 2nd [IMG]i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif[/IMG]

just kidding!

bhayes82

oh.. one more thing: if anybody actually did download the photoshop tachometer template and made some sweet tachs, post 'em up! i made another for my number one homie...

KUNZometer.jpg

Puff

Thats tight, what made U go out and look 4 info on that

RexWatson

despite the "use" of the info. i think its still a good hack. i like the kunzometer. the car goes," goooooooooooooooooooooooooood *vtech* baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad"

AlphaInfinity

DannyK35

ill be happy when you return the car too...it will be refreshing not having to listen to your incessant bi@tching.

Diznavis

<< that's excellent news for my friend who just lost both 1st and 2nd gears in his '86 rx-7 turbo! ("hey hayes, watch this! i think i can FINALLY get the car going in 3rd!... [light turns green]... [THUNK...click...click]... [warning chimes, lots of flashy lights on dash]... awww... hold on, lemme try again!"... again... again... lol) >>



heh couldnt start his car in third i had to drive my 88 dodge omni 8 miles in 4th gear the whole way when my linkage fell apart, including hills, stop signs, lights, etc, and i made it back and didnt stall it once after i figured out that it was in 4th gear (the shifter just floated all around, i was lucky to get it in 4th, it was in a position that looked a little bit like first, except the shifter was even farther to the left than first gear was, and might have even been up farther than it would be in gear normally) i ended up finding second before driving it again to get it fixed

NoToRiOuSxPiNoY

iTrader: (1)

No need to bash him.. all he did was give you guys an idea for you to run w/. I wouldnt do it but hey.. maybe someone in this site mite fight it useful.

1028CiViC

iTrader: (-1)

so is this useful? or it's not..

CapYoda

iTrader: (30)

I think its useful if it can be done.

its always good to have different gear selection. I wouldn't use it for racing or anything, but there's use for being able to keep ur car in 1st gear.

speedracersong

iTrader: (10)

has anyone done it yet?

Turtle

This CANNOT be done. I hope no one has started cutting anything. I was looking at the hydraulic flow in the transmission, and the spools are not set up in our trannys for this. This means that Germany has a different tranny than we do. I have, however, come up with another idea. Use the Shifting mechanism out of a newer Prelude in our car. The Preludes have Sport shift which allows you to manually control an automatic tranny. I have been looking at the wirirng diagrams for the two cars for the past couple hours, and it can be done. THis would be yet another massively difficult DIY. It'll cost a good bit too since I need a Tranny computer out of the Prelude and the whole shifter. I wont start on this for a while so dont start jumping at e for a DIY.

NightHawk

hey turtle..thats a good idea..keep me posted on info...i have some hookups so let me know how easy/difficult it would be

speedracersong

iTrader: (10)

if i were only as smart as u turtle
how pimp ud be if u had a prelude sport shifter

Bartkat

Not to worry about hurting anything by running in 2nd or 3rd auto. when you hit the redline, the fuel cutoff kicks in anyway, so you can't over rev the engine. As far as sport shift, I tried one of those and it seems unnatural to me. I'd rather just up and down shift using he conventional auto shift handle. BTW: I don't think that's going to hurt your tranny unless you downshift to 2nd at way too high revs.

BTW. My 350 CID LT1 Firebird didn't have a D1 position either. It started in D2 if yo put i there. Started in D1 if you had it in Drive. D2 is handy for reducing wheelspin on snow and Ice, also good for engine braking on same.

Turtle

BartKay:: Have you driven a 97-01 Prelude with Sport Shift?? It is fun driving those things. Why bother yourself with shifting D3-2-D3-D when all you have to do is slap the shifter. Just give it a little nudge, and it shifts. Up, down which ever way you want. Your concern about downshifting to 2nd at high rev, This pretains to any and all vehicles, no matter what type of tranny. It's one of those duh huh type things.
My 355 cid (350 bored .030 over) '59 Chevy p/u is the same way. The difference is that you have overdrive (700R4) where I just have three gears (350TH).

speedx3

God, why bother buying a auto tran if u want a first gear...?[IMG]i/expressions/face-icon-small-confused.gif[/IMG]

Bartkat

I'm not concerned much abut shifting into D2 at too high speeds. I just mentioned that would be about the only way you would screw up your automatic by downshifting.

I drove my buddy's Prelude back in '98 and found the slap shift to be fun, but not natural for me, having drivin all sorts of tranmission cars since 1955. You kinda get set in your ways, you know.