Ahoooo

Hi All:

I've said it before and I still say it "I love the CL-S!"

Purchased car September 2000
Change oil every 5,000 - 7,500 miles, Rotate tires every 10,000 miles
Hardly drove the car in 2002 where I did not work because of 9/11
20,000 New windshield
21,000 Xephyr CAI added
22,000 Dual stage shock detector added
48,000 rotors machined
60,000 miles first coolant and tranny flush (not power flush on tranny)
69,700 miles purchased 4 new Michelin Pilots
97,000 new plugs and brake fluid
130,000 moved from New Hampshire to Florida
131,000 new windshield
135,000 4 new tires, ran over sheet rock screws in road and 3 of 4 tires had 10 screws in each tire (got 65,300 on this set)
137,000 front and read after market brake pads
145,000 new front and rear rotors, 2 serp belts, new plugs, motovac induction cleaning
156,800 tanny power flush, power steering fluid changed
156,900 swapped out new front aftermarket brake pads with factory ones from Acura for $200 because factory ones were only after 30,000 miles. What a difference
157,000 tranny starts skipping between 2nd and 3rd gear shift for 7 to 10 seconds. Happens about once a week.
Acura Dealership here says they can't get factory tranny for me because I have over 100k on car and quotes me $3,150 for aftermarket rebuild tranny and 10 hours labor at $85/hr ($850) to install it.

I call local tranny franchise (Name begins with "C") and they say bring it in for a look at. I do a Google on this company and come up with a list of compaints where one customer had to bring his truck back to them 17 times to finally get his tranny working correct. I cancel my appointment with this place.

Talk to my neighbor whose father had 3 tranny shops in Texas and sent his entire staff to a place in Kansas for training. Place in Kansas was a franchise that had 10 stores in that area. Father told my neighbor for 10 days the training consisted 100% of how to get as much money out of the customer as you can. PERIOD. Neighbor said it would of made a great 60 minutes undercover story to see the techniques they were taught.

Call another local tranny place (25 years in family business) and he quotes me $2,200 to rebuild tranny, install, fluid, etc... Day 2 he calls and says "is this car from the north?" I say Yes. He says well "we just cracked your tranny casing while trying to losen the bolts that hold the casing. Looks like the salt up north had froze them on. Tranny guy calls back and says "Guess what... I can get a factory tranny for $1,761, $23.50 for 10 qts. of fluid, and $464 for labor for total of $2,248.50. He says it is cheaper to buy the factory tranny than him trying to find a tranny case and rebuild mine. I say do it. Tranny is in and came with a 3 year 36,000 mile warranty. He was only going to give me 24,000 mile warranty if he rebuilt mine.

Plan is to keep car for another 50,000 miles (2 years) and reach 210,000 miles.
I have not replaced my timing belt yet and am thinking on this one that I might not.

Love this car!!!

Don't pull all the hole shots out of the toll booths that I used to when the car had lower mileage.

Steve

russianDude

This sucks, looks like tranny failure is inevitable if you plan to keep this car until 200K miles. Have you had tranny recal done before your tranny died?
It might be still worth paying 2-3K to get a new tranny....

Ahoooo

Yo RussianDude:

Acura checked Tranny at about 75,000 miles and said everything looked A OK. They pulled a small plate off somewhere under hood and looked at some gears or something.

Shop that put new tranny in said he talked to Acura and it seems there are multiple problems with their tranny. It is not always skipping from 2nd to 3rd gear like I had.

Mechanic did say he DOES NOT RECOMMEND POWER FLUSH. I know Acura and others have told me they do recommend. Mechanic said he gets 2 - 3 trucks/cars in a week and asks what did they do different. They all tell him they just had the power flush down on tranny fluid. Mechanic has instructed me to get tranny fluid changed every 20,000 miles. I went 90,000 without change at one point. Place that put my tranny in has been in business 25 years.

Steve

DutchCLS

160K dude is good to hear despite any potenial problems. I think mot people are spoiled with Acura's reliabilty and start to think the cars suck when things start to break at 150K. I had a VW Corrado and I'll tell you i don't miss my mechanic....that thing had a problem every other week...although i still think the Corrado is the one of the best cars i've driven to date...it's good to hear there are CL's on the road with that kind of mileage!!

falabarce

well, I thought I was up there with the rest of the crew when it came to the milage.

I currently have 136k (turned over earlier today) on it from purchasing it in Aug.2001.

I had my tranny replaced for free from Acura at 112k.

Only other "required" work I've done on the car are the front engine (under ABS controller) and the left engine (behind radiator) mounts. I had to pay for parts, but Acura did service at goodwill at 125k.

At 125k I decided to finally spend the money and do the timing belt, drive belt, radiator flush, and water pump service. This was $1100 total...

At 128k I replaced my plugs with NGK Iridium, and replaced pads and rotors with Brembo cross-drilled and slotted kits.

All in all, I plan on keeping this car and drive it into the ground. Unless something major happens, I would not mind in the least bit rebuilding it when needed. Bang for the buck, fun factor, and looks I still get, this car is worth every single penny.

speedB

no shit crazy story man, i have 106k on mine with original tranny and band aid fix at 75k and it shifts perfect, i friggin love the reliability of this car as a whole, i used to own an audi a4 1.8t quattro and the friggin thing was in the shop every week with something stupid and expensive, i will never go german again

DutchCLS

lol...speedB...same here...VW and BMW though.....great cars but the reliabilty isn't like Acura. I got tired of trying to arrange having my car fixed while trying to work....i'm back to Acura and remembering why I bought that first gen CL many moons ago!....hopefully the CLS will be as reliable as my first one...

brianlin87

iTrader: (1)

damn that's a lot of miles.

o1s

yep 130k miles 1 tranny. 88 bmw 325is. i have $22g in repair receipts from the time it was new. what a surprise, it still doesn't run right.

falabarce

That's actually one of the reasons why I didn't go with Audi or BMW...

I was pushing my personal spending envelope by paying what I did when I first bought the car and aside from not spending an extra $10k to get the same power and fun factor, I didn't want the $1-2k every 6 months in maintenance costs associated with the ownership of them.

Acura on the other hand, Honda in general (I can't say the same for Toyota and Nissan because I've heard and seen nightmare stories) makes great cars that are reliable whose engines only care about having clean oil and gas....anything else to them is superficial. They can be beat to hell, held together with duct tape and gum and the thing will run like a champ. And German cars yes they are freakin' awesome, run great, ride like they're on rails and scream Autobahn.

BUT, you miss a scheduled maintenance and the cars says,

"Guten Morgen, I'm sorry...you have forgotten to give me fresh headlamp washing fluid, did not clean my rotors for the second time this week, and you have not tightened my gas cap properly when filling up...you fool...do not "v"orry my friend, I will break down now so that you may have a $100 charge to refill my reservoir, $250 brake cleaning service and a $150 service charge to reset my CEL...good day, please call a tow vehicle now...and please ...use a flatbed this time, I do not appreciate being pulled around like a wagon as was the case last week" <fade to black>

Sly Raskal

iTrader: (1)

Damn, I have an '03 purchased at the end of Aug '02 and I just passed 130,000 miles.

Black03CL-S

It's good to hear of so many cars going well over 100K miles, I hope I will be as fortunate. I'll have my CL exactly 1 month tomorrow. I bought it with 43K on it and so far I love it. From what I've read here they seem to be very reliable with the exception of the tranny. Quite a few of my co-workers and neighbors have had Acuras and Hondas and I kept hearing over and over about how much they liked them and the reliability.

I did have a 94 Camry coupe previously and I will say that was a very reliable car. I had it for over 12 years (bought it new) and was at 148K when I managed to total it. Now the CL is a much better looking and fun car to drive! But, I can't say anything bad about the Camry, it started up on the first try every time and never left me stranded. In fact, I never had any engine/tranny issues. Other than routine maintenance my only problems were very minor, the antenna stopped going up and down and I had to get both power window motors replaced. Oh yeah, one of the door handles snapped off once but that was it. I got the Camry because the car I had before it (89 Iroc-Z 350) left me stranded several times and had endless electrical issues. So far I'm loving the CL.

Lord Helmet

That's great and all but you'd better do that timing belt before it breaks and you tear up a perfectly good motor.

Ahoooo

I hear ya......

fender4

buy belts and water pump here http://www.acuraautomotiveparts.org/ have a local independent honda/acura repair place put them on,, my total cost was $450

Black03CL-S

Are you saying I need to replace my timing belt at just 44K miles?

GreenMonster

Nope, lord helmet was directing that at the original poster...

Timing belt is due @ 105K miles...

http://john-perry.com/share/maintenance.pdf

Lord Helmet

^^

Black03CL-S

Ok, just checking, 105K is what the manual says. Thanks for the info, just wanted to be sure I wasn't confused.

goredcar

So what is this BS they give us up here suggesting that we change the timing belt at 100,000 Km???

Type S Zero

10 hours of labour is WAY over-charging.
under warranty acura pays i think about 5.3 hours... and we do it so often that we never take more time than that