Maxlife ATF or DW-1 for rebuilt Honda 4-Speed?

[DEMIEJ8]

It went from jamming into third gear to buttery smooth?

Yes, just like that, it would occasionally shift so quickly into third gear that it felt like it was jamming into it. The shifts were way too aggressive with Maxlife, the 2-1 downshift now engages a bit more slowly but with that it doesn’t cause the entire car to jolt back like hitting a curb. I found about 4 anecdotal reports while deeply browsing the forums of people having very harsh shifts with ML and that 2-1 neck breaker was common amongst all of them in Honda transmissions.

 

[DEMIEJ8]

You mentioned Raybestos. It just occurred to me the other day that a good while ago I had emailed them about their 'honda' frictions.

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Unfortunately that wasn’t the case for me. You’d think that for such a specialized product there would be lots of people using and commenting on it but I could barely find any information about those frictions other than the description on their website.

 

[kschachn]

Yes, just like that, it would occasionally shift so quickly into third gear that it felt like it was jamming into it. The shifts were way too aggressive with Maxlife, the 2-1 downshift now engages a bit more slowly but with that it doesn’t cause the entire car to jolt back like hitting a curb. I found about 4 anecdotal reports while deeply browsing the forums of people having very harsh shifts with ML and that 2-1 neck breaker was common amongst all of them in Honda transmissions.

That’s something. I’ve never felt like I’m hitting a curb in my Accord using MaxLife, nor have felt like my neck was about to be broken. Maybe this is a problem with newer Honda transmissions.

 

[DEMIEJ8]

That’s something. I’ve never felt like I’m hitting a curb in my Accord using MaxLife, nor have felt like my neck was about to be broken. Maybe this is a problem with newer Honda transmissions.

I know it works for most people but it just didn’t work for me, believe me I tried to trust and save the ML by blaming the shift quality on any other thing I could think of but the atf. I’m just going off of what I feel in the tranny and the DW-1 really did make it about 90% better, when driving it again I kept expecting the harsh shifts at every gear change but they never came back.

 

[dgvu89]

Honda DW-1 doesn't fix 2009 Accord vibration during 2nd gear range. Just feel no different than Valvoline.