Honda, as a whole, is one of the best drivetrain engineering companies on Earth. Anybody can build a 1,000-horsepower W-16 engine, but will it pass muster on emissions, fuel economy or cost? Nissan builds a great AWD system for its GT-R supercar, but Honda built the best AWD system on Earth for its crossover utility vehicles and sedans. So, Honda knows what it's doing with drivetrains -- usually. Alas, every so often, a bad apple does pop up. Sometimes two at a time.
The 2007 Accord made news partly because of its slick and sophisticated six-speed manual transmission, a notable oddity in a world full of automatics. However, this transmission wasn't on the street for long before owners started noticing that it had an odd little quirk. The transmission, almost from the day it left the showroom, had a noticeable grind going into third gear. As time went on, the grinding would get worse, until it became either impossible to get into third gear, or the transmission randomly began popping out of third. The problem was more noticeable on cars operated in colder climates, and was intermittent before total failure.
Old-school gearheads with manual transmission experience recognized these symptoms almost right away. Grinding gears, difficult shifting and popping out of gear are classic symptoms of failing synchronizers in the transmission. Honda addressed the problem in technical service bulletin 08-020 dated April 2nd, 2008. Indeed, as Honda recognized, the affected vehicles had either faulty third gear synchronizers or a faulty third gear shift sleeve. It recommended replacement of the third gear set. The TSB affected 2003-to-2007 Accord V-6 models, and 2006-to-2008 Civics. It was covered under warranty for some cars at the time, but many of those who had bought early Accords were caught in the gap between warranty expiration and TSB issuance.
For a few years at least, Accord owners just couldn't win when it came to transmission problems -- even the automatic had problems. Shortly into the production run, Accord owners started experiencing failures of the secondary shaft bearing, which caused bad shifting that eventually cascaded into a failure that made shifting worse. Drivers who quickly shifted through any of the reverse, neutral or drive gears found that the transmission didn't last long before the secondary shaft bearing failed. Once it did, progressive failure of the transmission was almost inevitable.
In 2011, Honda issued a recall for about 1.5 million 2005-to-2010, four-cylinder Accords, and some-year CR-V and Element crossovers. According to Honda, the shift programming in the computer was too aggressive in engaging the gears while shifting from one to the next, and didn't allow one to completely disengage before it grabbed the next. The resulting stress damaged the output shaft bearing. Honda says that the condition occurred primarily in "unusual" situations, as when drivers rapidly shifted from reverse to drive while trying to rock the car out of mud or snow. The fix was a simple software update that slowed down engagement of drive, neutral and reverse.
