jerm1386

I tried to be as thorough in the descriptions as possible to help in diagnosis. I also did use the search, but I may have missed something so bear with me.

Things to consider: 1999 Acura RL with 155k miles. I have had this car only 2 months and driven it 3k miles (soon to be 4k). Previous owner only drove it 10k in 2 years.

Transmission!
I don't think it's ready to die or anything, but it makes me nervous and is a real pain in a car that otherwise feels super-smooth. It shifts fine under slow or constant medium acceleration, but jerks when decelerating, when changing the throttle while under medium acceleration and when accelerating fast. I drive this car like a grandma because I'm afraid to cause any more damage to it. Also, it makes my stops feel jerky. I have replaced my rotors, so it's not that, but the car shudders right before it comes to a stop if I'm stopping quickly at all.
Now it does not make an audible clunk, jerk really hard, drop out of gear, or shift when it shouldn’t (which is why I'm not that worried) but it's quite far from smooth. I bought this car 2 months/3000 miles ago and the owner said he'd just gotten the tranny fluid changed at meineke 500 miles before(have paperwork). This worries me, since I've read that only OEM honda fluid is supposed to be used. Also, I previously had a 1 gen 3.2 TL and I saw in those forums a way to change the tranny screen (here) . I also read that we have the same transmission as the 1 gen TL. So would using that DIY help me out at all?

Engine noise. Buzzing noise, sounds like some hard plastic or metal piece is loose and resonating at a certain engine RPM. This is backed up by the fact that it only occurs at certain RPMs but not when I am accelerating quickly - it doesn't have enough time to build up a resonance.
Doesn't matter what gear I'm in, only what the tach says, though needless to say I rarely hear the buzzing in 4th because it'll usually downshift at about that point and because of wind noise. I haven't been able to reproduce the problem while stopped in neutral, but I suspect that's because it's too easy to change the RPM while in neutral, so it doesn't resonate as steadily.

if steady RPM: 1500-1600RPM, 1800-1900RPM
if slowly accelerating: 1500-1700RPM, 1900RPM
if accelerating Average: 1700RPM, Nothing
if accelerating quickly: Nothing, Nothing

Sitting in the driver's seat, it sounds like it's coming from the direction of the right front wheel

More engine noise. I had this on my TL, too. it is easiest to hear when lightly pressing on the gas going slow (25mph or less) and is more evident in cold weather. ONLY when the gas is pressed it makes a faint ticking sound at around 10Hz (it's not slow, it may not be 10Hz, but that’s my best guess) that (from the driver's seat) sounds like it's coming from right-of-center, like between the vents and the air bag. I cannot tell if it increases with RPM, as once RPM's get high enough to be able to tell the change (1000+), it gets very hard to hear the sound over normal engine/road/wind noise. It seems this has been brought up here before, but with no true diagnosis. Suggestions were the valves or the cruise, or just that it’s normal, but I’m guessing not the cruise, since cruise won’t even engage below 25mph. and my oil level is fine. It does go away somewhat after it gets warm, but it’s still audible if I really listen. And even if it is normal, I’d kind of like to know where it’s coming from so I can shut it up or dampen the noise.

many bulbs are burned out. Window switches, seat heater lights, select button, climate control, shift indicator (the plate to the left of the stick)
What size are these bulbs and where can I buy replacements? All I can find in the manual is the wattages of the bulbs (0.56W for some and 0.84W for others). Ideally I'd like to do a full LED swapout on every interior bulb.

dimming rearview mirror doesn't dim and shows some unremovable lines that look like fluid got inside the lower half of the mirror. I assume this is the leaking problem, as there seems to be the remains of black fluid in a permanent droplet on the underside of the mirror. (see pic later today - I'm at work right now)

Scratch in passenger side rear door window - any way to polish it out?

front bumper paint - know of any good paint/body shops near Harrisburg, PA? I have hundreds of tiny chips in it, too many for touch-up
Headlight - looks faded. I'll get a pic up later, but when I do I'd like to know whether it looks corroded or just like moisture.

Driver's side seat only partially adjusts. I can't adjust rear height or recline. I believe it to be the relays or the wiring. When I move the switch to recline it (forward or backward) i get nothing, not even the click of the relay turning on. Same with the rear height adjustment.
Passenger side seat is fine

Speedometer is off by about 5%. That is, when I am going 60, it'll read about 63. Any way to correct this, it’s really quite annoying. Note that the ODBII port agrees with GPS (which I take to be the correct value, rather than the speedo being correct and ODBII/GPS being wrong).

cruise control: every now and again when in cruise control, I hit the 'decelerate' button and it actually increases speed by 5+ mph. My best guess is that maybe it reads it as a 'resume' and is resuming to a time when I was going faster, but to be honest I have no idea.

Also, I have an SRS light that came on when I removed the passenger seat, and it hasn’t gone out now that everything is reconnected. I am 100% sure that is when the light came on.


But here's what I've done so far that’s good:
replaced brake rotors to fix shimmy
k&N drop-in air filter
chrome shift plate
carputer in progress with custom slide-out touchscreen and 4x20 HD44780 LCD
LED dash swapout.