I have a 04 civCi hybrid, replaced transmission last year. Fluid is fine, transmission is shifting fine. Yesterday I was stopped at a stop sign and when I went to go it acted like I was in neutral. After about 2 minutes,it started working. Happened 2 more times, always at a stop. Today it hasn't happened once and is driving great. Has this happened to anyone else?

 

Similar. On two occasions shortly after I bought our 2003 HCH used it acted like a manual with a badly slipping clutch. Turning the car off, letting it sit for a minute, and turning it back on "fixed" it each time. Later that CVT developed increasing problems with judder and eventually the start clutch was serviced. (Which costs more than replacing the transmission on many other cars.)

My best guess is that there was some piece of crud jamming the valves that control the start clutch so that it wouldn't engage. Eventually with the car off that crud circulated to some less harmful part of the transmission and hopefully eventually ended up stuck to a magnet.

You might want to try changing the CVT fluid a couple of times. That is about the only thing you can do to clean out the transmission. The fluid changes, if you can do them yourself, are much cheaper than having to replace or service it, although given the cost of the fluid, they are not exactly inexpensive. Who serviced the transmission? If it wasn't a Honda dealer they might have put in the wrong fluid, which is a bad, bad thing for these CVTs.

 

Thanks for the info. I will replace the fluid. Fortunately it was the right fluid. Drives great now so hopefully that was it.

 

subscribed, this seems like a very interesting thread