Auto Transmission In The Cold?
 

Hey all I have a 2007 Honda Civic DXG automatic transmission. This is my first winter with the car and I noticed something that concerns me a bit. The Transmission seems to struggle for a bit early on while driving. It seems to rev really high and and lurches as if it can't decide what to do. it is basically shifting very abruptly and very hard. When it gets warmer it seems to be quite a bit better but that doesn't seem normal to me. Even when warm sometimes it doesn't seem to shift great. I read something about it maybe being a torque converter drain back at this website. Any ideas on what I should do? The car is in the driveway all winter and I can't do anything about that but this just seems too dramatic to be normal. Thanks for any ideas

http://appauto.wordpress.com/2008/01...ission-issues/

Re: Auto Transmission In The Cold?
 

Is this your first winter with the car? How many miles on it? (Km)

That description isn't converter drainback. I haven't even seen one of these cars with a drainback condition yet, unless the car sat for a month or more (it may be expected under that condition).

When the engine is cold it is supposed to idle fast, that helps it warm up a bit faster and keeps the idle more stable. If it idled at the regular hot speed, like 700RPM when the engine was cold, it would be far more likely to die as soon as a load were put on it, or stumble, shake and vibrate, etc.

The trans holds gears longer when cold to keep the engine revved up higher and longer, in order to speed up the engine warmup time. Normal.

They do all this in order to get the engine to operating temperature sooner, and to minimize exhaust emissions by getting the catalytic converter to operating temp as soon as possible.

It's all controlled by the computer. You can't do a darn thing about it.

Test drive an identical car and compare it to yours, under identical conditions. That's the fastest way to see if yours is truly doing something out of the ordinary.
If yours drives normally after it's all warmed up, then whatever you feel is probably normal.

Trans fluid service lately? Quickie Lube place? Flush done? Wrong fluid used? THAT will mess with the transmission.
We recommend changing trans fluid every 30k miles, that's probably 50,000km for you up north there.
ONLY drain and fill fluid for a trans service, and use only ATF-DW-1, the only currently approved trans fluid. Other fluids can and do make them "shift funny".

Re: Auto Transmission In The Cold?
 

How hard are you pushing the gas pedal..if you are excelorating slowy then it will hesite "between gears"...at the shift point the car wants to shift but is not going fast enough...if you excelerate faster does it go away? I can find or maybe E can fill you in on the technical terms for it but i know these cars do this under slow exceleration...