I have a 2003 Accord 4-cylinder with 51k miles. Driving home today, the car lurched then hesitated a few seconds after accelerating out of park. I parked again, turned off the car and tried it again. Same thing happened, but this time there was a grinding sound coming from right below the gear shifter after I put it into drive. Also, once I was in drive the dashboard indicators for gears D3 and D2 flashed on and off while the light for D was also on. Reverse gear has no problem. One time the grinding also happened in park. At lunch, the car was fine; this all started on the drive home.

I'm hoping it's a problem with the gear shifter module but dreading that it will be the transmission (seems to early for it to go at 50k miles).

Any ideas?

I highly doubt it's the transmission. While the I4s have the same transmission as the V6, they have less power, therefore less load, and you should be fine. I also have an 03 I4 with 160k, still original tranny. However, I suggest you go to the dealership nonetheless to be safe, but sounds like it is a shifter issue. Not that that's gonna be cheap to repair either. The notorious transmission problems have to do with the 2nd gear bearing, so if you're only experiencing problems while shifting from park, then it's not the dreaded transmission problem.

Car is at the dealer now. It was hard to tell whether the problem was from shifting out of park or whether it was from shifting into second. The first time it happened it was when shifting into second. But later on I was trying to drive to the dealer and lost almost all power about 20 ft after it lurched while slowly pulling out of a parking space. Luckily, reverse works fine and I backed into the spot and waited for AAA.

I have a 2003 Accord V6 AT and my transmission failed at 52,000 miles last year. The transmission failures are a lot more involved than just the 2nd gear bearing. The first sign of a problem was when I was slowing down the car jerked to a halt while it was downshifting out of 4th. Felt like it tried to shift into 2nd slamming the car to a halt. When I tried to accelerate, nothing happened, the RPM's just revved. I got it home safely as I was only two blocks away. I put the car in reverse, and it sounded like metal grinding. Towed to dealer, but they could not reproduce it. It became a random occurrence.

Over the period of two months, I experienced the transmission slipping out of gear between first and second, and second and third. It was completely random. It was like driving a manual transmission and depressing the clutch and watching the RPMs rev up with nothing happening. Then it would engage and drive normally. Each time I took it to Honda for them to evaluate and maintain a record. The one thing I could eventually reproduce every time was freeway driving and the failure to downshift when accelerating to pass. Attempt to accelerate to pass, and the transmission revved up, and then jerked into gear.

I went on vacation and let Honda keep the car for a week. By the second day they experienced the failure in transmission. Under Honda's goodwill policy, they replaced my transmission and torque converter free of charge. So start keeping a record and start taking it to the dealer so they can also keep a record. Once they experience the same problems with the transmission, they can address it. I never had the D3 or D2 lights flash, just the random slipping of gears.

When it first happened, I thought the problem was random, especially since all driving before that (including a few hours before) was fine. However, I can reproduce it every time now. Hopefully that will make it easier for the dealer to diagnose.