I recently had the entire transmission on my wife’s Odyssey replaced for what turned out to be a degraded “solenoid” (whatever that is?). It was making a noise for about a year and when I complained once, Honda told me they could not hear it, but when I complained again it was during the Toyota PR disasters and their hearing not only improved, but after a couple of rounds of negotiations they offered to pay 80% of the total repair, which was nearly $4k.
Fast forward 2 mths, and my wife is driving one of our kids to school, and she gets to the top of the hill in the neighborhood, takes her foot off the gas and when she decides to press the gas again, she can hear the car making noise, but rather than move forward, it starts to roll backwards down the hill until she wisely puts the brake on. Only when she stops, shuts off the engine and starts it again does the car actually move forward.
I took the car out when she got home, noticed nothing of course and told her she was imagining things.
A few hours later, she is driving in town and the same thing happens at an intersection where she had slowed for a red light, but instead just hears the engine rev and the wheels do not engage. She calls and I tell her to go immediately to the dealer.
I meet her there and a day later when we talk to the dealer, they tell us they can not replicate the problem and the computer does not have any codes recorded in regards to problems like this, so they need to keep it over Memorial Day weekend and look at it again Tuesday before they can assume it has anything to do with teh transmission.
My question is, what am I supposed to do if they say they can not replicate it, therefore can not do anything? I can’t let my wife back out there with this thing if this is going to happen without notice, especially given the hills that are all over the place out here…not sure how to deal with the dealer on this one.