So in the rainy Sonoma race, near the end we started having trouble getting into 3rd then 4th gears on Sunday afternoon. A quick check of the trans fluid level showed it was basically empty! Eeegad! That can’t be good.
So I decided it was time for a new transmission. Technically it’s a transaxle, but whatever. I did another deep dive into Honda transaxles that fit F and H motors. We loved our last trans because it had tight ratios and a low enough 5th and final drive that it was actually a usable gear. The stock accord trans gears were so high that shifting into 5th from the top of 4th usually resulted in loosing speed! That trans was a m2a4 which was a good choice for us with generally lower gears. This time I got lucky and found an m2f4 on ebay, and it was driving distance. The m2f4 is an even better choice. It has the lowest ratios of all the suitable transaxles, and it did not come with a factory LSD. The Cusco LSD we have only will fit in a trans that did NOT have a factory LSD so that was important. The m2f4 was originally found in the last generation Prelude VTEC. So I drove down to Carmel Valley and bought it and hauled it home. If we were going to keep our cheaty LSD it would have to be moved from the old to the “new” gearbox. I did that once before with significant help from Tedd. Now I would be doing it alone. When we first installed the LSD we did it the easy way, leaving the gear stacks intact. But this time I figured while I am in there… You know how that goes. I bought a complete rebuilt kit from Syncrotech. It had new bearings, syncros, retaining rings, seals, and detent springs. Getting the trans out is always a chore. I won’t go into here, just imagine a whole day full of banging, head scratching, bleeding, and swearing and you get general idea. I did buy a cheap 500lb hoist from Harbor Freight and strapped it to a garage rafter. The chain on this thing looks like toy chain, but it did work and it did help a lot.
The rebuild was intimidating. I did lots of preparatory reading and had a plan and it generally worked. I carefully pulled each part of the stack and laid it down in order so re-assembly would be easy. Along the way I did several things wrong, once causing the layshaft to be too long so the case wouldn’t go on, and ended up re-assembling the stacks and the whole dang trans several times. Getting the case to go on was the hardest part, leading me to give up and come back weeks later. One of the shafts wouldn’t go in and clip in place. The online advise was to put it together turn it over and drop it on the ground to push the bearing/shaft into place. I was dropping it hard onto my wood workbench. Eventually I put it on the ground and dropped it lots of times just a little onto the concrete floor and click, that worked. After another day of cursing, bleeding, and head scratching and with some help I got it back into the car and all bolted together.
PicknPull Racing 