grodri

A family friend is offering me a 2002 Civic LX, automatic in wonderful condition. I took a look at it today and it's got an almost immaculate interior, exterior, engine bay has no leaks, etc. However, I've read a lot of bad things about BMXA transmissions. The car doesn't have any RPM jumps on shifts, it's strong and feels great. But it's scary to think at any moment the weak clutch packs could break apart and block up the filter (that's for some reason inside the transmission and unreachable without complete disassembly - WTF HONDA?? )

My question for all you fine folks is: At 180k miles, the car still drives very very well. Mechanic owned. $1900. Is this a safe bet for a reliable vehicle? I wouldn't be able to afford the down time needed to tear it down and upgrade the packs or install an external filter kit unless it was during some downtime and I was doing it as a personal project. Any surprise breakdowns are a no-go.

Is the BMXA purely a lottery? Thanks

Colin42

Do you know the service history of the trans? When and how often and what fluid? Did they do the recommended drain and fill or did they use a flush machine?

$1900 seems decent, if it does end up failing, 04-05 trans bolt in and they seem to have corrected the problem

grodri

They don't know much about the history. In fact they thought it was an 04 but the carfax came up 02. They're a family friend and the car is rock solid, but even if it wasn't a model with the issue, 180k could be the final stage of its life (it's the original tranny).

How many miles should the 4-speed last with diligent maintenance? Literally just trying to mitigate the probability, based on the drive it looked really well taken care of.

Wankenstein

That transmission has the potential to be foul, cruel, and bad tempered:

ezone

I hate to guess....lifespan can vary a lot...
I recently put a Honda reman trans in an 01 Civic at 180,000 miles. (recently=the last one I replaced)

CBet

Have you done this procedure before? Looking to swap an 04 ex trans in my 02 ex.

Colin42

I swapped a non-vtec manual trans to a vtec manual trans in my old car, everything bolted in. Rockauto lists the same part numbers 01-05 for rebuilt automatics on their website

Fernando_em2

Honestly the 2001 civic has the worst transmission of that generation but mine is the 2001 but it lasted about 345k miles on the original tans, But I replaced the entire trans and engine all at once to a 04 trans with 65k miles and a d17a with 35k miles i wanna say engine was 900 and trans was 750 so it wasn't too bad