Black_6spd

Oh well, this doesn't surprise me the least. I knew the risks with the flawed RSX 2nd gear and decided to bite the bullet anyway about four months ago:
https://acurazine.com/forums/showthread.php?t=31535

Last Friday, while cruising to work, I noticed a rattling sound while in 2nd gear. While the gear seems to still engage, you could definately feel it slipping. I managed to drive the car home 25 miles without using 2nd. I also noticed that there's a rattling sound in neutral that seems to go away when the clutch is pushed in.

Up to that point, the car was running like a champ with the better ratios for about 4 months. However, I should've known better after seeing the warning signs over at the clubrsx.com boards. 2nd gears blow out all the time. Honda has a serious design flaw that becomes even more exposed when folks put down more torque like I have with the K24. Boosted k20a setups go through trannies all the time. The weird part is, I don't powershift or drive the car hard all the time.

I had Jesse at Team Honda pull my tranny out yesterday and will be sending it to the guy who did the original work. The guy has been supportive so far, willing to "go halves" since he backs all of his work.

I didn't bother trying to scam Acura to do warranty work. This was all experimental on my behalf and I have to live with the consequences.

As soon as the tranny case is opened, I'm 90% sure of the following:
- 2nd gear is fried and will require a brand new 2nd gear set
- possible damage to 1-2 or even 2-3 syncro
- possible damage to mainshaft or countershaft

Now, I'm faced with some options. Should I play it safe and just build it back to stock? Or should I gamble again and try to bulletproof the tranny?

Hopefully, I'll have some pics later this week.

CGTSX2004

iTrader: (1)

If you're gonna do it, go all out and do it right. You'll end up with one of the best geared TSXs in the world and it'll be well worth it.

curls

I think it comes down to this: Was the improved gearing of such benefit that you can handle the monetary implications and the downtime while the car is in the shop, to do it again?

Tsx536

That's the unfortunate thing about modding. Often when you're not OEM, you have to worry about extra maintenance and even the higher possibility of a failure. It's usually a fine line between too much modding, and stopping while everything is still OK.

If you get the OEM tranny, you'll probably not have to worry about it again for quite awhile.

If you rebuild your tranny with more of the performance parts, you'll have a great tranny that will provide you a lot of fun, but could be a headache down the road. If you think you'll have the time, money, and patience to deal with issues if they arise down the road, I saw you rebuild it for performance again. If you think you would lose your patience, then just back to OEM.

This reminds me of my header situation. Switching out my DC header and worrying about whether it would fail got very old to me. I stopped having fun with the installs. I even considered putting the stock one back on at one point and if I have problems with it again, the OEM will defintely be going back on.

Either way, I'm sorry to hear about your tranny problems man. Things like that suck to deal with, but it sounds like you are handling it very well and taking care of everything appropriately.

waTSX

Sorry to hear about this. Hopefully you can get it squared away. It would be cool if you could get the TSX geared the way you want, while still maintaining reliability.

S14 n Tsx

my buddy had a same issue with his 04 si. Man, just go all out!

ILoveMyHonda

If you could afford it, I say do it. Just this time, make it Bulletproof!

drunkenbuda

Gotta pay to play, do it big!

Black_6spd

When you lose during a gamble, it never seems worth it.

Luckily for me, I have a spare Civic to use. But trust me, I have difficulty sleeping at night w/o my TSX in the garage.

Something to add to the "rebuild back to stock" camp...

I could always go boosted with the Comptech kit. One of the main things stopping me from going SC was my shorter gears. I guess it's an option #5:

5. Rebuild to stock TSX gears with cryo treating

Why cryo treat? Because I don't know if the stock gears can handle the power and we're still in the infant stages of a supercharged TSX. Luckily, nobody on this board has experienced a major failure associated with their SC setups.

However, in the K-series world, gears are falling apart all the time under boosted setups. Most are opting for cryo treating when rebuilding.

shaang

You still intereted in the HyTech set-up? Hows that coming along?

Tsx536

How much does cryo treating cost?
With the Comptech SC were are only running 5 lbs. of boost. How much boost are the guys running who are getting the transmission failures? Are they also running NOS on top of their FI setups?

Black_6spd

Yeah -- I was close to putting a deposit down with John, but this happened. This will most likely be a pretty good setback. Oh well -- I wasn't planning on doing the long header until I get an 06 cam setup + 06 IM + kpro anyway.

Kenny - the guys breaking their gears with k20's are running anywhere from 220-300 whp with their setups. The guys that are rebuilding with cryo gears haven't had any problems so far.

I'll get back to you on the cost.

Tsx536

Cool, sounds good man. Sorry to hear that this is gonna delay some of your other modding plans.

Also, isn't the TSX transmission made of stronger material than the RSX though? I thought the 6MT TSX was made out of the same material as the S2000 tranny?

curls

AFAIK, the casing is made of a magnesium alloy, but the gears and such are all made from the typical materials. The RSX and RSX-S casings are probably made from a different alloy (not magnesium). Magnesium is touted as being stronger and lighter, but again that only refers to the casing, not the gears.

Black_6spd

Actually, cast Magnesium has a lower tensile strength than typical cast Aluminum. One of the big advantages to using Magnesium is the ability to cast smaller/thinner section widths that would place less constraints on your design.

On the subject of the gears, I'm trying to research which type of alloy Honda uses and if cryo treating has a benefit on paper when it comes to shear strength without compromising corrosion resistance. I also want to make sure the treated gear is compatible with typical tranny fluids.

Once I have the gears out (probably today or tomorrow) I'll be able to investigate if the failure was due to fatigue stress (cycling), shear failure, or a combination of both.

simplyscion

wow, thats a scary thought right there...these honda trannys are that weak?

Black_6spd

^^ Yeah, at least on the Type-S. I read threads from guys who are doing their 2nd or even 3rd tranny rebuild. Building a K-series isn't for the faint at heart or financially challenged enthusiast.

I just wish some things were bulletproof like the B-series. Those setups will always have a place in Honda history.

Black_6spd

For those interested, I was able to dig up a pretty good paper on cryo treatments in general:

http://www.energy.ca.gov/process/pub...g_tc113571.pdf

I also stumbled upon this piece on another site that answered my original concern:

Looks like a winner to me. I'll be sending my gears out. It looks like kingmotorsports can help.

CarbonGray Earl

Damn, that sucks. I say go big as well, but I think that's alot of money. It really depends on your final power output and plans for the car of course, but if it make a cost/benefit argument, then by all means, go big while you can.

Black_6spd

Update....

After cracking open the tranny a few days ago, Josh (aka 'drivetofast') found out that I busted a few teeth on the mainshaft:


I decided not to go with cryo treating my gears. I'll explain my reasons later.

If all goes right, she should be back up and running tonight or Monday. Jesse at Team Honda has been cool about allowing me to store my car at his shop so far.

Black_6spd

Sorry for the delay, but here's an update after replacing the carnage shown in the pic above:

1. I decided to have only the mainshaft replaced. All other gears looked fine. I'll explain why I chose not to cryo-treat below.
2. After picking up the car on Monday from Team Honda in Buena Park, shifting was tight and notchy as hell. I learned later that they didn't have any MTF fluid around and used the manual-approved 10W-30 as a temporary fluid.
3. On Wednesday, I picked up a few bottles of the new 2007 MTF fluid from Acura and put it in. The shifting has improved somewhat.

Here's my engineering take on the failure of the teeth:
- If you look at the 2nd gear closely, you'll see that it was never completely engaged with the countershaft gear before it failed. All gears are designed to handle most loads when the teeth are completely meshed for maximum surface load distribution over a greater area. When not fully engaged, the angles are supposed to make the gear separate or pop out of gear. Since this is a helical design, that wasn't possible.
- Bad Shifting Habits - after considering the above root cause, I noticed that even when I casually shift, my hand is too far ahead of my feet engaging the clutch. Too many times have I pulled it out of gear before depressing the clutch.
- no initial tranny break-in - although some will argue otherwise, it is my belief that rebuilt trannies must be properly broken-in. Keep in mind that whenever you are mixing new parts to mate with older, worn parts, they have to establish proper wearing surfaces. Although my brand-new 2nd gear came deburred from the factory, the teeth were still relatively sharp compared to the worn mainshaft. All tolerances apply to functioning with a new, non-worn mating gear.

When taking all of these things into consideration I opted to skip cryo-treating for a number of reasons.
1. Cryo-treating benefits are reported in wear-related applications such as tooling. This failure was a shear load failure.
2. Cryo-treating does not harden metals - most technical publications I've read support this. Rockwell tests only show a 1-point difference.

When it came down to it, most of the so-called proof in automotive applications were anecdotal.

jmathew34

wonder if they can retro-fit a dsg/smg gearbox in my car

CGTSX2004

iTrader: (1)

Haven't you spent enough money on your car?

moda_way

About the only thing I've seen that hardens metal (aside from content) is shotpeening. We do that in the aircraft engine business (not naming who). I'm not certain if Honda/Acura already do this, but I can ask a board member who knows their manufacturing process. My guess is no due to the width between the gears.

Black_6spd

Not trying to be a smartass, but shotpeening is typically used for improving fatigue life of a component that will be cycled like piston rods.

The current alloy used by Honda is most likely already heat treated.

aaronng

Shotpeening will increase yield strength, and will make cracks less likely to occur. While it's not the ideal solution, it should prevent broken teeth and give you bent teeth instead. Which do you prefer?

Anyway, gears are commonly shotpeened in between the teeth.

Lao Sticky Rice

props for benig the lab rat and enlightening us about the stuff that u had to go thru

hmmm...very tempting as the 2nd gear is abit of a bother from a day to day basis

all the best matey hope it'll stay in good shape longer second time around

anthrnltsx

there are some technical talk, so I'll contribute my 2 cents

Shotpeening probably is not a good idea even for automotive gear as it will have negative impact on involute and addendum profile and leave roots untouched. Besedes, it never get over AGMA class 8, although automotive gears may not even require that. Shotpeened gear probably requires non standard hob or generating gear grinder but since surface irregularities, there wouldn't be a point in grinding it to start with...

Most highly loaded gears are either case hardened or induction hardened, depending on the metal composition (assuming some kinda steel). Given the typical life requirement is like for automotive stuffs along with corrosion resistance issues, the gears probably are selectively induction hardened.

Cryo treatment for the most part is like black magic. Matensitic steel like 440C appears to benefit from that quite a bit with grain structure/phase stability and benefits life cycle. However, it was pain in the rear end to figure out exact setup that helps. Dumping any random metal into liquid nitrogen like a lot of these funny places regardless of metal composition and heat treatment history would be just dumb and possibly hurt the components. Besides, cyro treatment hardly ever increases tensile strength.

h1coupe

didnīt honda upgrade the gears on 05-06 rsx-s as well as the new civic si? because of the reoccuring 2nd gear failures?

hope you wonīt have any more problems