Hi, please tell me if I have to take my TSX to dealer or just chalk this up as rare event.

I have a 2005 TSX. When the car was at 4-5 months old, with the mileage around 6000-7000; I had a interesting acceleration problem.

I was driving uphill (kinda steep), and at that time there was a bike race going on (south of Lake Tahoe). Since the bicyclist were going kinda slow, and the road kinda curvy and hilly, I stayed at around 25-35 mph behind bicyclists. Then there was an opportunity to overtake, and I did a quick left to overtake and put my foot on the gas. So there I was, on the left, on the "incoming" lane, and the car did not budge at all! Fear took me over, and I floored it (foot on gas). The car still puttered along at 25-35mph. I saw coming traffic and I prayed hard. The car managed to putter, putter, putter, and I just managed to squeeze back onto the right lane (in front of the bicyclists).

I have an automatic transmission. The road was steep uphill. Is that something for me to expect in the future? Going uphill, accelerating? I mean the car did not increase its speed at all. It just stayed the same speed eventhough I "floored" it. Why did the car not downshift in order to accelerate?

The incident happened 2 months ago. I have yet to experience any other acceleration problem with the TSX. I can accelerate without any problems on the highway or in the city.

I have not accurately simulated the sudden uphill acceleration, although I have tried to do so. On these other attempts, there was no problem with acceleration. The car downshifted normally.

Is this isolated, or should I use tiptronic to drive uphill in future.

By the way, I first learnt to drive on manual and am very comfortable with knowing which gear to change to in specific situations.

Your input would be very helpful!! Thanks!

Lisa

Civic 1996
traded in for Acura TSX auto navi in 2/2005
Meteor silver metallic

LOVE LOVE LOVE my TSX

 

My TSX struggles on hills as well. Nothing to worry about.

 

Nothing to worry about unless you are facing oncoming traffic!

When I know I want to pass someone, particularly when crossing onto the other side, I change to tiptronic and make sure I change down before pulling out. The TSX/Accord auto has a habbit of pausing for too long when changing down. I must admit I have never experienced it not changing down at all.

 

Not good if you are facing oncoming traffic!

When I know I want to pass someone, particularly when crossing onto the other side, I change to tiptronic and make sure I change down before pulling out. The TSX/Accord auto has a habbit of pausing for too long when it decides to change down. I must admit I have never experienced it not changing down at all.

 

Hmm... no matter how steep the hill was, it should have automatically downshifted into a lower gear to bring the revs up to at least try and accelerate (no matter how steep the hill). There is no reason for the tranny to not downshift when you floor it.

Maybe you accidentally bumped the shifter into sportshift mode and it stayed in too high a gear?

Personally, since your TSX is still under warranty, I would bring it in to the dealer and have them check over the tranny to be sure it's OK.

 

Good thought McGriddle! However, I definitely did not bump onto the shifter, and I did take that possiblity into consideration. After I overtook the bicyclists, I looked and checked. (Oh BTW, the bicyclists were also shocked and probably sweating bullets from the slowpoke overtake.... )

I did think about sending it back to dealer to check. I have not have had any other accel problems since, so I am kinda stalling. Any other person out there think this extreme unusual too?

And yes, driving uphill on tiptronic would probably be what I will be doing in the future.

 

damn that's weird

 

Did you pump anything less then superunlead into your car?

 

Uh-oh... I thought this was normal. When I go up hills, my transmission seems somewhat jerky but nothing that made me nervous. Maybe I too should get this checked out!

 

Yea... i agree with McGriddle. Everymorning on the way to work there's a spot on the highway where there are merging lanes and i have to speed up in order to merge into traffic. So... i basically give her a little gas, she'll downshift once and if that's not good enough i'll give her a little more gas and she'll downshift a 2nd gear. by this time i'm already flying so there's no need to floor it.
I dont think i've run into a time where i've had to floor it before and still have not had adequate power.

 

Yea I used to have that problem, but it was solved with the cold air injen intake. Somewhat... I still had a power drain in intersections rolling or at a stop when the at was stuck on gear 2 or 3. The car would have absolutely no pickup for a second or two, and you would have to floor it.

Another thing I noticed is our car doesn't like to down shift when you floor it. I'm always stuck on 4th sometimes when I wanted it on 3rd but the sportshift can solve that.

I think the Grounding kit and voltage stabilizer helped with my power loss now.

 

hmmm never had a downshift problem here... car always downshift uphill. traffic. any situation. granted. there were times when sport shift was more spontaneous. but when in full auto mode. my tranny always shift crisp and fast downward.... never had any of the problem you guys described during 22k miles i had the car....
but i did have that problem with my 01 CL-S

 

The AT controller is not very intelligent. You should still be praying to God and thanking him/her. Next time, make sure you use SS and floor it.

By the way, did you have any "excessive" weight in the car? I imagine with a 161 ft-lb of torque rating (pre-SAE), you wouldn't be able to haul much, let alone up a steep hill in the rockies.

 

Other than the full tank of Shell right out from dealer lot, I have always used Chevron 92. I do not use any additives.

The consensus seems to be that what happened is unusual, rare and wrong. I will give a call to dealer service later this week, and chat with them. I don't mind taking my car in for inspection, except that they are so gosh-darn far away!

 

No excessive weight. Just maybe a <100 lbs of luggage in the boot (was on travelling vacation thing).

I was playing the music kinda loud....but THAT would not affect the tranny.

P.S. Boot = trunk

 

Good luck Katz. Hope they figure it out for you.

 

Hmmm. I was just thinking that if this glitch had caused an accident, would there have been any way to prove that it was a faulty transmission?

 

My car just shifts one gear instead of two maybe becasue I don't floor it all the way.

 

What if the TSX does the same problems on the highway and not a hill?

 

It looks like when you are going with stable slow speed (like 25-30 MPH) the auto transmission is running on 4th or 5th gear, so that it need some time to shift back to the 1st or 2ng gear for acceleration. I had a similar situation with my 2004 TSX but I found that if I press pedal to the metal it go fast but with a few second hesitation.
To avoid this I'm switching to manual shift to lower gear. Once I've found that traction control may slow acceleration if condition just a little bit slippery.
I don't thing that dealer will be able to fix it. This a 4cyl problem when low RPM

 

the transmission probably didnt down shift enough, thats why ALWAYS use the SS when ure overtaking into oncomming traffic, id rather be the one thinking for the car, atleast shifting wise...

 

Doesn't sound normal to me. You should get it looked at. BTW it never happens to me on the mountain passes here and if it did I would not hesitate to have it fixed. When I pass going uphill I want to know without a doubt that the power is going to be there. On that note, I am suprised that this didn't turn into a MT-AT bashing thread yet and were on post #21.

 

my wife's honda accord 2003 EX with Navi does not have this problem at all while using regular gas. I actually bight TSX because I was in love with that Honda and this is still a Honda. TSX is more sportier and stable on turns, looks more luxurious in and out, other than that, this 4 cyl Honda accelerate ride way better than TSX.
dealer actually may reprogram downshift moment, but this will compromise smoothness. Dealer will never get it right.
Just my 2 cents

 

I just had a thought. You did mention that it was a steep hill. Is it possible that when you gave more gas, your tires lost traction causing the stability control to kick in? Maybe the road was wet? Or there was gravel on the road?

Since you were on vacation, I’m assuming that you’re nowhere near where this occurred. It would be interesting if you could go back and try to see if you could reproduce the problem (while remaining in your own lane of course).

You might want to call the Car Talk (www.cartalk.com) guys and tell them about your problem. They have a weekly show on National Public Radio (NPR). They really like interesting problems like this.

Their # is 888 CAR TALK. Listeners outside the U.S. should call 617-353-6350. Car Talk uses voice mail to be fair to people in all the different time zones. Anyone can call anytime they like and leave a message. Every week they go through the messages and pick a variety to throw at the guys when they go on the air.