Okey-dokey, I have a 1991 Accord automatic gone wonkey in the past month. It started with my engine surging while in park. This stops as soon as I put it in gear, but it has poor acceleration in low gears, and grinds before jerking into higher gears. It also seems to grind sometimes as I maintain a speed above 50 mph. It's an automatic, and sometimes I'm not sure what gear it's actually in while I drive, because to count by the jerks it only has 3 gears??

Anyways, about two weeks ago, while driving, the S-light started flashing, and the speedometer dropped to zero and stayed there. At the same time, both my odometers stuck, and 5 minutes later, the check engine light came on.

I've driven it only a little since, but when I do, everything on the dash seems to work okay for a couple of minutes. Then, for no apparent reason (speed change, hill, etc) I get a repeat of what I described above, and it stays that way for the rest of the trip.

I connected a wire to the service check and the S-light gave code 4, while the Check Engine gave code 17. My friend David (who is now unfortunately out of the country for a few months) said it could be a bad VSS, but when he checked the voltage on the wire(?), it wasn't zero, meaning the VSS was at least working. However, where it should have been 5V, the meter only read about 0.6V. David checked the fuses then, but they were all fine, and that left him out of ideas.

I don't need to drive it much at the moment, so I'm posting for advice in case it's something I can check/fix myself. Also, I'm wondering if the first set of problems (likely having to do with the transmission) could be connected in any way to the second set, since the first became significantly noticeable within about a week of the second?

I'd appreciate any thoughts on my problems, as I'm pretty ignorant about cars. I've only had this one for about 6 months. It's my first, but I am slowly learning and not afraid to get in there!

Thanks!