'92 Accord TCU

My auto transmission was randomly stuck on third, a classic TCU failure
symptom! I decided to open up the TCU and play with it before
purchasing a replacement unit. I as inspect the board, I found two
adjacent transistor (220uF) and resitor (10K Ohm) burned. Went to Radio
Shack, purchased the two items for a grand total of $2.29, replaced,
and the problem is fixed! Hope this post helps someone with the same
TCU problem.

 

----------------------------

I have a PDF and a link where a guy explains how to do that fix . .
apparently it's very common for the caps to eventually fail, which takes
out the other components. google.com is a great tool for such stuff.

'Curly'

 

don't confuse people, the value you give for a transistor is in
micro-farads, which is a capacitace measurement. some people only
read and have no understanding of what they are doing.
I've re-built several of these for people. it is cheap and easy

and resitor (10K Ohm) burned. Went to Radio

 

don't confuse people, the value you give for a transistor is in

Yes, you are correct. It was a capacitor, not transistor. Thank you for
catching the mistake.

 

TCU Fix DETAILED

Worked like a champ.
Symptoms: I'd be cookin down the road in my 93th 10th anniv and all of a sudden it'd shift out of OD into 3rd or 2nd. And sometimes I'd see the shift indicator swap indicators even when parked w/ ign on...often with relay click noises. Other times when driving it would shift up to 2nd but no further. Was worse when ambient temp was very hot.

TIPS: You need a 10mm deep well socket, and to make things easy a drill drive with extension. You need a flat blade screwdirver and a small phillps and a soldering iron and a 220 uf Capacitor [at least 35volt rating] and MAYBE a 10K resistor [1/8watt, or 1/4 or 1/2watt]. Radio Shack or visit some hacker and he'll have them in his junk box.

FIX: Peel back the carpet from the top in the passenger compartment. On the slope use the 10mm socket and remove the bolts on the silver cover. Its still attached so donkey it out just enough to get to the screws that hold the RIGHT SIDE gold-colored box to the silver plate you just undid. You can undo those 3 also w the 10mm as the nuts are captive. [Like all tax slaves...ha ha] There are two wire harness connectors that hold that right side gold box to the plate. Use the flat blade to release the plastic tang on the 2 connectors and undo. Now take the gold box to the bench and undo the 4 phips screws. Inside are more screws to undo and about 3 PLASTIC board attachments...use a needle nose to squeeze those and undo the PCB.

Look on the PCB for some BIGGER BLACK cylinders. Those are capacitors. One big bad one next door to a small 10K resistor will have some OOZE coming out of it. Note the POLARITY as one terminal is postitive and one negative. On the PCB marked in WHITE is the LINE that corresponds to the line on the cap negative side. Got it? Ok...now remove the cap by unsoldering. The trick on caps is to match the capacitance which is 220uf and put one in with same voltage or higher...so 35v or higher. You could go slightly higher or less in UF...won't matter much. And you can do tricks like PARALLEL two 100uf 35v caps.
Examine the 10K resistor to see if it still has actual 2 leads and still soldered to the PCB. Actually the 10K resistor is not part of the cap circuit so I suspect the OOZE ate the resistor in some people's cases but mine was still ok. Nearly any 10K resistor will do as the ones in the circuit are around 1/8th watt. You can clean up the ooze to examine the PCB traces. BTW...the PCB has conformal coating on it which is like a lacquer clear paint which is sometimes hard to burn thru with a soldering iron. Take a cue tip and dip it in brake cleaner to dissolve it and it'll also take care of the ooze too. Just dry it off before install.