'98 Honda Passport gears? or transmission?

My '98 Honda Passport (automatic 4wd, 144600 miles) has been having problems. It started a few months ago: while coming to a stop, the car would seem to ‘slip’ out of gear until I stopped. A friend ‘re-packed’ some of the rubber in the gearbox & it made the problem less prominent, but did not fix it.

Now, along with that issue, when I take off going forward, the car will not engage into first gear: I have to give it gas & it hesitates for a moment before it will move (it feels like it’s in Neutral then it shifts hard into gear). It only seems to happen going forward from a dead stop; once the car gets moving, this doesn’t happen in any other gears until I’m slowing down to stop. It also does not happen when going in reverse. We’re trying to find someone here to take it to, but since finances are tight, I need an idea of what the problem might be and what price range I’m looking at to fix this. I love this car dearly and am not ready to trade it in. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

It sounds like you are losing the pump. How does the fluid look?? is it dark, How does it smell??? Burned??? As always, check the fluid level and condition first. I would want to put a pressure guage on it and a scanner to monitor line pressure and line rise from the Linear solenoids. A transmission shop would have to do this for you. Dont expect the answers to be favorable… Sorry… Oh, what did you mean by a friend re-packing the rubber in the gearbox???

transman

Typical symptoms of transmission trouble. Have seen this go on for many months before the transmission had to be replaced. If you are lucky maybe some adjustment of linkages will fix this.

Stupid question, but is the transmission fluid full? If it’s low, you’ll experience this on most cars.