I am beyond satisfied with my car’s performance and the quality of the rebuild done.
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The Long Road to Repair
Yesterday, 10th May, Toothless finally returned home. After an excruciating 5 months of the car being down, she’s finally back. This post will be an in-depth look and review of SEHMBI and the wonderful people in their team who helped my car get back up and running, hopefully forever. I’m just going to brush over the initial stages of this car in case someone reading hasn’t seen the previous posts, and then I’ll get on to the final updates.
The Initial Problem
Around 5 months ago, my Honda Accord V6’s transmission had a catastrophic failure, rendering the car grounded and unable to drive. An inspection from my Honda ASC led to a 5 lakh bill, not including labor, to have the transmission and torque converter replaced. This surpassed the price I had paid for the car and was totally not an option. After doing some research, I stumbled upon SEHMBI, and after speaking with Harjeet, he gave me a confident confirmation that he could get my car up and running. The car was then towed to SEHMBI around 5 months ago. The initial quoted timeframe for the repair was 15 days. You might be asking yourself how that turned into 5 months, and honestly, me too. Due to several delays in retrieving parts from overseas, the time taken was stretched another 4 months. I will say this is definitely not SEHMBI’s fault, as they are unable to control these situations. Now onto the final review.
The Moment of Truth
I and another TBHPian hopped into his 2.4 Accord and went to meet up with some of his friends to grab lunch. I received a call from Yash, the mechanic working on my car, and he said that the car had been buttoned up and sent for a wash, and would be ready by the time we reached there. I sat waiting anxiously while eating some Taco Bell just thinking about how close I was to getting my car back. After everyone was finished, we hopped into the car and started the 1-hour journey to SEHMBI. I remember counting down the minutes and growing restless as we inched closer to the workshop. Finally, after what felt like days, we arrived. And there it sat, my beautiful car. Washed up and shiny. From what I had read in other reviews, I was expecting the car to be dirty, but I was pleasantly surprised to see that both the inside, outside, and underbody were completely clean. The missing Honda badge on the wheel was replaced and everything looked perfect.
The Rebuild: What Was Done
Apart from the transmission job: 3 engine/transmission mounts were replaced, and all the control arms were fully refreshed with all new bushings (I was under the assumption that they would only replace the two large damaged ones, but they replaced all of them — I am extremely happy about this), and the front lower ball joints for both passenger and driver side were replaced. The ball joints were fine but during the disassembly of the lower control arms they were damaged. SEHMBI took full responsibility for this and replaced them free of charge (extremely impressed with this). After admiring my car once again, I took her for a test drive. I fell in love all over again. The way this thing pulls and sounds is absolutely ravishing. I floored it into VTEC and heard the cam profile switch over with my exhaust open. It rides like an absolute dream. Especially with all new bushes and ball joints, the car was absolutely stuck to the ground with not an inch of body roll or instability. The transmission was shifting flawlessly, kicking down gears and picking up with ease. Even the jerks that were felt before shifting between drive modes had significantly reduced due to new mounts and new transmission internals. Everything was perfect.
A Moment of Connection: Talking with Yash
I was a happy man, I was ecstatic. My friends were happy to see me so overjoyed. After parking the car back at the workshop, I started speaking a little more with Yash to get a better understanding of everything going on. It was then that I discovered that he was a fellow Maharashtrian. We continued our conversation in Marathi, and it became a lot more relaxed. He went over all the details involved in the car, and it was also then that I discovered that he too owned a V6 Accord of the same generation as mine and that he bought his car with a failed transmission and rebuilt it. My confidence in this rebuild skyrocketed. Someone who had already done this exact same project before and had all the experience that came with it fixed up my car. Not only did this show that he is very well experienced in this, but he also knew all the workings and auxiliary systems that would need to go along with it. Essentially, he knew exactly how to do everything properly, and that was so reassuring to hear. He also informed me that he had serviced my axles by regreasing the ball bearings, which I hadn’t even asked for, but he did it anyways completely free of charge. Huge wins going all around here.
Settling the Bill: Costs and Additional Advice
Then it came time to settle the final bill. On top of the 25k that I had paid in advance, they had stuck to the initial promised quote of 80k for the transmission rebuild. Here is where I would like to give people who may need to go have their transmission fixed (God forbid) some helpful advice. If you have an old car like mine, with worn engine mounts and suspension components, please set aside an extra 15k for your project. These old parts are made of rubber and will be fine with normal driving, but with something like a rebuild where a subframe would need to be dropped and a transmission would need to be removed, they will fail. With that out of the way, I paid 6940 for 3 mounts — 2 transmission and 1 front engine — and another 6k for 6 bushings total for my control arms. Around an extra 13k. They have not charged any labor for the installation of these parts. The total cost for this came up to approximately 1.18 lakhs. I will admit the price is a bit on the higher side, but the job was executed with such professionalism and perfection that I’m satisfied paying this much. It definitely beats the 5 lakhs offered by the Honda dealership by a long shot. Not only was this a transmission rebuild, but a slight front-end refresh. A small quirk I’ve noticed is that when the car is cold and I start driving it, shifts from 1–2 are a little hard, but it smoothens out after I drive it for 10 mins. I will speak to Yash tomorrow to understand this a little better and closely monitor it. SEHMBI has provided a 6-month warranty with unlimited kilometers in that timeframe, which is awesome.
The AUX Issue: A Mysterious Problem
The only issue that had come up was my AUX connection. It still wasn’t working, but the radio played on all speakers normally. I brought a screwdriver and quickly disassembled my center console. I was greeted with a bunch of scraps of paper and plastic — it looked like trash to me — and I discovered that the internal AUX cable connection was shredded. I breathed a sigh of relief since it was a cheap 200 rupee fix and wasn’t an issue with the expensive adapter that goes into the head unit. I was concerned about the trash, however. I asked Yash if his team had anything to do with it and if they had been in the center console. He denied any involvement with that part of the car and said the only work he did was up in the front. I believed him because he has been nothing but transparent and professional up to this point. Considering that my speakers were working 5 days before I had it towed to SEHMBI initially, the only place it had been in that timeframe was my Honda ASC. I have reason to believe they were messing around with the inside of it while trying to diagnose the transmission issues and put it in as makeshift sound deadening. Some of the papers in the center console have some printed information on them. I’ll go take a look, and if it’s proof that Honda did this, they’ll be receiving a very angry phone call from me. Not only was the center console filled with garbage, but the AUX cable was also destroyed in the process. Anyways, I just picked up a fresh AUX cable on the way home and installed it in 2 minutes. No big deal.
Final Rating & Verdict
I am beyond satisfied with my car’s performance and the quality of the rebuild done. A special thanks to Yash at SEHMBI Bangalore for speaking with me countless times and providing regular updates, while also performing a fantastic job on the rebuild and overall reassembly of my car. Without someone as professional and experienced as him, I don’t know how well my car would have been reassembled, or if it would have even been possible. I would also like to thank Harjeet, who from Mumbai handled my frustrations about delays with extreme professionalism and did his absolute best to expedite the parts needed for my car. He has been extremely transparent with me on everything, and I was not given any unforeseen surprises.
Overall, I rate SEHMBI a solid 9.5 out of 10. If only it hadn’t been delayed so much, I’d give them an 11/10, but I am extremely satisfied and happy with the quality of work carried out. It definitely beats the 5 lakhs offered by the Honda dealership by a long shot. Not only was this a transmission rebuild, but a slight front-end refresh. I’d also like to thank a fellow TBHPian @PainlessDeath09 and his friends for coming along with me on the drive and helping me out whenever I needed it.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go and drive my car.
Drop a gear and disappear.
Mine and @PainlessDeath09’s cars next to each other:
And I’m back to taking pictures anywhere this car goes haha
(Dear Moderators, I have posted this where I have seen other SEHMBI reviews. If it needs to be merged with my existing thread please do so. Thanks in advance.)
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