nagidizy

Well, we're approaching 700 miles on my TSX, and a few minor negative things have cropped up or at least become noticeable. At least, I hope they're minor. Has anyone noticed any of the following?:
a) slight stumbling on take-off, as if idle set kinda low, or not enough gas being given when first tipping into throttle froma stop;
b) notchiness in lower gears, a sort of reluctance to easily find 1st or 2nd gear in a smooth fashion, which is seemingly remiss in a manual tranny from Honda
c) the abruptness of the throttle roll-off; a light and gentle touch when backing off the gas is rewarded with a pronounced lurching, rather than the expected smooth transition from on-gas to off-gas?

The throttle abruptness I had heard about and can live with, probably by modifying my technique to compensate for the lack of touch, or perhaps by checking to see if there's a spring that could be modded to introduce a little lagtime to the throttle roll-off. But the feel of the tranny is not something I expected to experience, given the kudos which the TSX tranny has received in the automotive press. I almost wonder if some heavy-handed knucklehead roughed it up during a demo prior to my purchase? And the stumbling could simply be indicative of the lack of low end torque / need for greater-than-expected revs to launch it from a stop (not at all similar to my CL65 AMG, ha ha).

Other than that, the car has been quite enjoyable

Thoughts? Thanks.

iamhomin

I agree on C.

It's been annoying the crap out of me everytime it happened, but my driving habits adjusted accordingly to it, so...I guess it's "all good" now.

pandimus

yeah, mine kinda jumps when touching throttle. Also i am not used to the brakes, i have not found that steady flow yet. So between starts and stops I make passengers feel were at sea.

Brain640

I've learned to never let off the gas at all at RPMs over 2500, because that's when you get the irritable kickback. If its anything under that, it just becomes a slight bump and anything under 2k is hardly felt. (i'm also refering to speeds over 40 mph.) Other than that, i just put in the clutch and then do my best to match the revs before engaging the gear again. This is how my dad did it and he went to skip barber racing school. Then again, that was about 25 years ago and gear boxes and clutches have changed, so please let me know if that isn't the best plan.

sauceman

Hey nagidizy, welcome to Honda. These cars are fairly particular to launch. You have to give them plenty throttle to launch smoothly, without having it kick at you. Also, when shifting into second, you need to almost consider it like it's a second launch. Be progressive with the clutch, but also, opposite to other cars, you need to step on the gas first, then release the clutch. It's the way Hondas are.

About the tranny notchiness, there have been a fair amount of complaints about this, but I myself don't experience this with mine. If you search under "notchy", you should find some stuff dating all the way back to last summer.

Good luck with the T.

divenow

I'm experiencing that throttle response issue too - kind of adjusted to it by now, and it only catches me every now and then. But I did find a really good pdf on autospies.com. Just search for the TSX, they have a pretty extensive pdf on the car with all specs and the technologies in it.

-------------------------
From that pdf:

To establish the current driving conditions, the system monitors pedal position, throttle position, vehicle speed, engine speed, calculated road slope and corner radius and engine vacuum. This information is then used to define
the throttle control sensitivity.

From the driver's standpoint (because the drive-by-wire system is combined with other functions such as VSA and Traction Control) this means that the way the TSX responds to throttle pedal movements is tailored to the driving conditions. In stop-and-go driving, the pedal response has low gain and is smooth and progressive for easy driving. A similar low-gain response makes starting out on snowy or icy roads more predictable. In low- to medium-speed driving conditions, the gain increases to improve response and acceleration. In high speed
driving, the gain increases further still, so that there's ample response for passing. The system also alters response based on the road slope, providing more throttle gain on uphills, and less on downhills, and also
reduces changes in gain on curvy roads to make the car easy to control.
-------------------------

From our experience with this issue, it seems that Acura has some optimization to do with their logic in whatever control unit handles this.

ClutchPerformer

I find that you can solve this for the most part by not pulling the shifter too far to the left (especially during the 1-2 shift). There seems to be extra room on the left side for some reason. But it's a lot easier to put it in first if you just barely slide the shifter around the gate than if you pull ALL the way to the left and then try to push it forward. For 1-2, just pull straight back--and don't pull left--and it should be better. It helps if you don't "pistol grip" the shifter for this one. Try it out and see if you agree.

TSXDude

I agree with Clutch as well.

I also noticed the notchiness goes away the more you drive your car. I'm at 5700km rite now, and the notchiness can only be felt for the first 5 mins when the car is still cold.

nagidizy

Muchas gracias to all who responded with such words of wisdom, experience and/or empathy: Iamhomin, Pandimus, Brain640, sauceman, divenow, ClutchPerformer, and TSXDude. Your names will go down in the annals of history as amongst the finest whoever done posted to a forum. Children will beg their parents to "Please tell the story of Shifter Notchiness again, Daddy!"

I will definitely try the suggestions given, and hopefully say goodbye to the abrupt-throttle woes, etc. As far as brakes go, I find mine to wonderfully smooth, progressive and able to be precisely modulated. This was a pleasant surprise: my old car had primo brakes, but I had expended $$$ to get it there, with cross-drilled rotors, nice carbon fiber pads, etc. ... a beautiful feel. To discover the TSX has same, straight out of the box, was "a good thang".

On throttle-abruptness: maybe Honda/Acura is kinda over-thinking stuff if they go to the degree apparent in the excerpt from Divenow's .pdf. As I approach a million miles of driving, I sorta figure my right foot knows what to do by now ...

Anyway, thanks to all ...