So, after gettin' into the bad accident back on the 21st of July, where I thought my CL type S might have been totaled... the saga continues...

The car was not totaled out, but instead taken in for some reconstruction. The Recovery Room here in town did the work on the car with all new parts, except the aftermarket battery and AEM air intake system. The total time for repairs took about 5 weeks. The total for the repair estimate was $8500, but an extra $900 were required to finish off the project. Not to mention the POS Pontiac Grand Prix they paid for me to drive around all month long.

Well, here's the dilema I faced the other day with The Recovery Room... The insurance companies give the auto body shops a two party check, so once i approve of the work, i co-sign the checks and then they can cash the checks. Well Wednesday morning (as tropical storm Ernesto was cruising up through Florida), they call me from the shop... "your car is all ready to go!" I said awesome, i work till 5:30 though, will you be open still? "oh i'll wait around for you" <-- he wanted me to sign the checks that day for the $$$... "only problem that we found was that your tranny fluid smelled a little burnt/looked a little dark... you might want to have that checked... I said, "well it JUST had it flushed at 60k miles (64k miles at accident), so I can't understand WHY it would be dark already if at all... "oh no big deal, you can just take it to the dealer when you get it from us..." No problem right?

Well, once i finished with work Wednesday evening and it's pouring rain now in Central Florida, I called the guy up. "yep sir, the car looks great, everything is fine except for the check engine light, the flashing traction control light, and the flashing D5 indicator on your dash... " I said "WHAT?!" he's like, yea we ran the codes and they're all transmission related problems, so when you get here you can take it to acura.

So long story short, i refused to go up there and sign anything until the weather was nicer, because I knew that a flashing D5 indicator is not a good thing... What else do I need than to be driving it home in the rain, all new paint, and then BAM, get rear ended when the sucker down shifts on me in the rain...

I had it towed to Courtesy Acura in Sanford the next morning after releasing it from the body shop, my boy RJ was takin' care of me here on out. He said "no worries dude, I will handle everything for you!" I had my Acura TLC Roadside service tow the car for free to the dealer for a full checkout.

RJ calls me later that day, and gives me the news that my tranny is FRIED and it's time for a new one! Good news because finally i could turn in that POS Pontiac and get back into a New Loaner from the dealer. Now i'm sporting a new 06 TL with Navi while my CL gets a new tranny. Said it should be done in about two weeks. Making the total rebuild time just over seven weeks in the shop. Sucks, but 'eh, what you gonna do but wait?

Thanks for reading my issues...

~Clint

 

Geez. What a PITA! Good luck with it all.

 

hopefully it'll be like a brand new car when you get it back. Just hope that the body work was up to par. I've been in too many post-accident cars that rattle and shit from sub-par repair work.

 

Yea true. The body shop guarantees all it's work for life, and so does Progressive. So... any future noises, if any, will be reported and they'll pay through the @$$ to fix them for me.

 

sucks man.....but good luck

but that was an awesomely told story

 

how did your tranny get fried while in the shop or did i read that wrong?

 

it was probably just it's time.

 

True that. With the impact and me jumping the car up on the curb, the jolt on the front end can cause parts/sensors to shift internally on the tranny. Say this jolt caused a sensor to go bad and give off the error codes to the computer. Well... with the obvious burnt tranny fluid, Acura can't prove that the accident caused their already weakening tranny to die when in reality it was probably close to its time anyway. My point is no different than yours, but, 'eh, New tranny either way.

 

just so you know they can void any remaining trans warranty if they have reason to believe it was caused by accident (highly unlikely though)