aklucsarits

The "Sport Shift" automatic transmission found in the 1997-2001 Honda Prelude is the worst transmission Honda has ever used in a car. They are horribly unreliable. There are Prelude owners who had 2 and 3 transmissions replaced even while still under warranty.

No other Honda cars in the US shared that Prelude automatic transmission. The options are to replace the transmission with another Prelude Sport Shift transmission new from Honda, re manufactured by Honda, or take your chances and try a used transmission from salvage. It's really going to be quite a gamble going with a used transmission because they were so problematic. Almost all of them fail eventually. Most Prelude owners consider themselves lucky if a SportShift transmission lasts more than 60,000mi.

The 5 speed manual transmissions for Preludes of that era were fine - perfect Honda reliability. A swap to a manual transmission is possible, but tracking down all the components needed to swap it can be difficult unless you have a complete donor car. It's also probably going to be at least as expensive as just dropping in a re-man automatic from Honda. The transmission swap from auto to manual on a Prelude is also not very common. So good luck finding a mechanic who would be willing to try it. Additionally - If the owner did entertain a swap from auto to a manual transmission, it's important to know that a 97-98 BASE manual Prelude transmission must be used. A Prelude TypeSH manual transmission will not work.