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Two days before Christmas, my 2003 CVT gave out. Driving in stop and crawl traffic, downtown Chicago, she made a loud POP noise and only revved when I hit the gas, no more acceleration.

Had it towed to the nearest dealership, after 5 days of diagnostics they said it needs a new transmission and they want an amazing $5,123 to make it go again. :mad:

They're supposed to have the sales dept. calling tomorrow with an offer for a trade-in, but I doubt they'll give me anything for it.

So, what should I do? Can I fix it for less, someplace else around Chicago? or should I post it on eBay/Craigslist and start looking for another one?

The first place I'd go is car-part.com (http://www.car-part.com)

It is a salvage yard search engine. I'd try to find one close by.

I found three in your area from $1150 - $1400.

Dealer will snag it from you for a song, pick up one of the above transmissions, install it and have your Insight on their used car lot in two weeks for $6,000.

A friend had his go out and he found a used one. I know he has a spare motor. I will see if he knows where you might find a tranny.

Sell it to me, cheap.

That sucks, sorry to hear

If there's nothing else wrong with the vehicle, I'd fix and drive it some more. If you don't want to do that, then I would try to sell it privately to someone else who would like to do the same.

I think the salvage option is going to be more of a pain than I can deal with right now. I'm having it towed to a friends driveway in the suburbs.

I'm taking offers now, otherwise I'll post it on eBay/Craigslist next week.

Thanks everyone.

post some pics please, and/or link to ebay/CL listing

I would fix it and drive on. That is the greatest car ever made IMO! I would love one myself. When I'm old and going through a midlife crisis I will get one of these instead of a old chevelle or something. : )

BTW 253k is awesome! HONDA!!!

Don't know if you could/would accept this alternative , since you seem to do CITY driving.............. but a manual trans should be an easy swap. And I have NEVER had a manual trans fail or need a repair.

A manual transmission swap is not simple in this car -- everything is too heavily computerized and the CVT version doesn't do lean burn anyway. You are best off replacing the CVT with another unit.

A manual transmission swap is not simple in this car -- everything is too heavily computerized and the CVT version doesn't do lean burn anyway. You are best off replacing the CVT with another unit.

I agree that a CVT to manual swap would be too complicated.
But some of the first-generation CVT HCHs do lean burn: the non-California emissions version (ULEV) has lean burn.

I've heard that rumor occasionally but never seen anything to back it up?

Regardless, none of the US spec CVT Insights has lean burn. A JDM version does have it however, and that's what was used as the base platform for the hopped up Rally car over in the UK. (Peter Perkins supplied a system to interface a high power lithium pack with the car and added some mods to extract more power from the motor as well)

It's hard to find the lean burn info these days. Honda only lists models back to '06 on their website now. I used to have a great link from Honda, but deleted it a while back from my "bookmarks". This other one may be a bit helpful, as are some Wikipedia entries:

http://www.honda.com/newsandviews/article.aspx?id=2003112038240

The other way to tell is if you go to http://www.fueleconomy.gov/ and look at the model year HCH-I listings, there are multiple models, some of which mention lean burn in their subdata. They changed that website layout quite a bit. It is much harder to find the lean burn listings now, but it's buried in there.

Wayne might have knowledge about the HCH-I lean-burn capability as well. I was reading some old threads where he spoke of it. Other than that, I can only say it's anecdotal; as far as I know my car has lean-burn. I used to be upset about having the "dirty" HCH/ULEV when I thought I had bought the cleaner-emissions SULEV. Lean burn puts out more NOx emissions..."my bad".

Ya know what?

I totally didn't realize this was the Insight forum. That's what I get for staying up way too late after I come home from work.

Sorry 'bout that. Got us all off track there.

Thanks for the links!

I think the first one is a world wide release and it doesn't seem to specify any market differentiation. I tried digging into the second one and while I see two models of CVT they don't differ enough in rating to cause me to believe one is lean burn. Compare to the 5MT (of which there are two as well) which we know to be lean burn capable and you'll see more of a difference than between the CVT models. Since there are two 5MT versions as well I'm guessing the difference is in California specific emissions equipment.

No problem on the thread topic -- the systems are very similar. :)

Thanks.

I wonder what the original poster decided to do. If it was me, I'd be inclined to have the tranny replaced unless the car is having some other problems, or the owner's needs require more than a two-seater. Insight is worth saving; it still beats the fuel economy of most cars available here.

1/11/12/ UPDATE: I got my Insight back this afternoon. The dealership originally wanted $5,123 for a new trans and install. Thanks to ALS for recommending car-part.com! I found a "recycled" transmission about 40 miles away for $1150.

Only took the team at Fletcher Jones Honda 7 days to install it. :confused:

They had all kinds of trouble getting it to cooperate, but with some help from the Honda Tech Line engineers, I'm back on the road for ~$2k instead of $5k.

I've got a 600 mile drive tomorrow, so that'll be the first test.

Thanks everyone!

Great news! Good to hear you are back in business. :)

Nice!


6. 7 .8. 9.

You're Welcome, I'm always trying to help people save money.

1/11/12/ UPDATE: I got my Insight back this afternoon. The dealership originally wanted $5,123 for a new trans and install. Thanks to ALS for recommending car-part.com! I found a "recycled" transmission about 40 miles away for $1150.

Only took the team at Fletcher Jones Honda 7 days to install it. :confused:

They had all kinds of trouble getting it to cooperate, but with some help from the Honda Tech Line engineers, I'm back on the road for ~$2k instead of $5k.

I've got a 600 mile drive tomorrow, so that'll be the first test.

Thanks everyone!

They only made a few hundred off of the install instead of a few thousand dollars. Congrats on getting it back on the road!

1/12/12/ UPDATE: First the good news - I made it safely from Chicago to Fargo, without the car making any funny noises or smells.

The bad news - 49.8 MPG over 500 miles. Roughly 12 MPG lower than my previous worst for this trip. So something is totally screwed up.

Cruising at 60 MPH on flat stretches, the ScanGauge was reading roughly: 2400 RPM, 72-74 LOD, and about 1.25 GPH. I don't remember what these were before the new transmission, but they all seem way too high.

In addition to replacing the transmission, they also replaced a few gaskets around the catalytic converter that were making an occasional rattling noise.

So, what did they do to my car? :mad:

Did they change the oil and put in non synthetic?
Wrong trans fluid?
Adjusted tire pressure....DOWN.
Colder weather.
Head wind.

Adjusted tire pressure....DOWN.
Colder weather.
Head wind.\


First thing that came to mind when I read his post.

Just FWIW:

Our (previous, still in the family) 06 Civic Hybrid is due for CVT fluid change. My son and I are going to do it this weekend. Following up on a recommendation here (by Psychack), I also am getting a replacement CVT filter (~$45CAN). It's a roughly soup can sized filter, along the hose between the transmission and it's radiator out at the front grill.

Any better mileage for ya? Figure out the problem?

Sorry I was going to say glad to hear its on the road again!!

BTW 253k is awesome! HONDA!!!

Slightly off-topic, but I just passed the 300K mark with my 2002 Accord. Manual transmission all the way! :D

Slightly off-topic, but I just passed the 300K mark with my 2002 Accord. Manual transmission all the way!

Keeping with the (off)topic , my Civic Si went 14 years and 233K miles with zero repairs to the trans OR CLUTCH. And the shifter was NOT loose or sloppy ! The rest of the car rusted to pieces , but the engine and transmission were strong.
Go manuals !

2/14/12 UPDATE: After my <50mpg trip I was ready to sell my car and look for another one. I have diligent MPG records from the last 5 years so I knew something was wrong. The tires were still at 58 psi, so that wasn't the problem, but I didn't know what else could be wrong. Turns out, a lot of things.

After pouring over posts both here and on InsightCentral I decided to try a few things. Previously I've never done anything inside an engine bay. So this was major work for me.

1) I replaced the Spark Plugs because they were overdue.

2) Probably the biggest was cleaning the EGR plate. I had replaced the EGR valve about 6 months ago, and didn't even know there was an EGR plate. But there was total, 100% blockage of all three channels of the EGR plate. I'm surprised the car ran at all after seeing it. A bunch of the carbon was even stuck to the gasket, so I replaced the whole gasket. Check out the before and after pictures below:

http://travishaughton.com/insight/egr/1.jpg

http://travishaughton.com/insight/egr/2.jpg

http://travishaughton.com/insight/egr/3.jpg

3) Took it to the dealership for an oil change. Wasn't quite ready for a change, but wanted to rule that out.

After these three things, the numbers improved a lot, but still not enough. Same trip was now about 60MPG, but this trip should be worth mid to high 60s in the winter. I was also noticing that engine LOD on the SGII was still sitting at 75-80 just to hold 55 mph.

More reading of posts led me to something I never though of. Sticking Brakes. I had experienced a 5-8 MPG sudden drop after having some work done last summer that included replacing the front brake pads, but I was never able to figure out the culprit.

One post recommended braking hard from 55mph several times to see if that helped. So I tried it and guess what, it seems to have worked! Suddenly, my engine LOD dropped to 55-60 at 55mph. Apparently I've been driving with my brakes on since August. I'm thinking now that that couldn't have been good for the transmission, and possibly led to the failure.

After the brake trick, the same highway trip was now at 67 MPG.

For good measure, I replaced the engine air filter two days ago.

My numbers around town are now higher than I've ever seen for this time of the year.

So I think I'll keep it. :woot:

Congrats on your successful DD. You might consider looking at the front brakes yourself too. If they were stuck once, they will stick again.

Awesome! Glad to hear you got it figured out, and man was that EGR plate nasty!!! Makes me want to go check my engine internals! :p

Beautiful cleaning job!

That is just amazing.. any way to prevent this by using chemicals (seafoam, MMO)?

Probably a healthy Italian tuneup every once in a while too... I've seen more carbon deposits with my lighter driving lately, and I'll see a puff every once in a while under a particularly hard pulse.