When it comes to these 1998-2002 Honda trannies, I can see light at the end of the tunnel.
I have a V-6 tranny I am trying to rebuild now. I can see why these trannies have problems. The internal filter is felt material, and Honda relied on fine mesh screens all over the place to catch large debris. These often get clogged easily with clutch material. The valves in the valve body often hang up so the bores need to be honed on a rebuild. Most rebuilders don't check the pump clearances and those trannies are doomed to failure. The tranny also has converter flow issues and needs mods. In addition, some critical bore clearances are wrecked if the tranny died and circulated debris, and the tranny shops are ignorant where this is occurring.
These issues have been brought to light by this valve mod kit by Translabs:
http://www.americanpowertrainwarehouse.com/servlet/the-57/honda-b7xa-bdga-acura/Detail
Finally somebody who is a tranny guru has taken a serious look at this tranny. The kit comes with 2 pages of double sided tech material which discusses the above. Rebuilding auto trannies is not for the feint of heart, so I suggest that people buy the kit and have a rebuilder install it. They will charge you extra for following the instructions, doing the valve body mods, and checking the clearances, but at least somebody finally figured out how to fix these POSs which Honda is not owning up to. As the gorillas at the rebuild shops are creatures of habit, expect them to charge maybe $200 for the mods and labor. But add $94 for the kit and it's cheap insurance on a $3,000-3,500 rebuild.
I might add the tech material sheets on the kit are dated late 2013, so looks like help is finally on the way. The kit is manufactured by Translab BTW, and these guys are bonafide nerds when it comes to automatic trannies. In developing the kit, they have done testing with 50 Honda/Acuras.
