LA Times Article follow-up

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Old Sep 18, 2002 | 03:02 PM
  #1  
RandyMax's Avatar
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LA Times Article follow-up

Copied from today's "Logbook" section of LA Time's Highway1 page:

Online Support

American Honda Motor Co. says the four-and five-speed automatic transmission woes reported in last week's Highway 1 have occurred in just 1.6% of the 1 million Hondas and Acuras sold with those transmissions.

The day after the story ran, it seemed as if the owners of most of those cars with transmission problems were online, e-mailing more tales of woe and seeking more assistance. One thing consistently asked for that wasn't provided in the original article were the addresses of the online forums dedicated to Acura and Honda transmission problems.

So here they are.

The only one with a specific transmission problem discussion is:

www.acura-cl.com/forums. Go to "Frequent Topics" and the transmission problems forum is the first one listed.

Eric Lear, the Webmaster, says he welcomes input from fans as well as foes. An ongoing poll, for instance, shows that most respondents have not had any problem with their Acura transmissions--a result in line with Honda's figures.

Lear's forum is dedicated to the Acura CL coupe. There is another forum, www.acura-tl.com, for owners of the Acura sedan. Go to the "forums" header, then "TL discussion," where a number of topics, including transmission problems, are kicked around.

And for Honda owners (the four-speed automatics on V-6 equipped Accords and Odyssey minivans are the ones that can have problems) there's www.v6accord.com/forums, which has a continuing transmission discussion under the "performance parts" heading.
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Old Sep 18, 2002 | 03:07 PM
  #2  
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Re: LA Times Article follow-up

Originally posted by RandyMax
Eric Lear, the Webmaster
bwahahahah.... that's funny that they called him the webmaster!!

Anyway, he has done a lot of work on this and I'm glad our site got mentioned.....
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Old Sep 18, 2002 | 03:08 PM
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Re: LA Times Article follow-up

Originally posted by RandyMax
Copied from today's "Logbook" section of LA Time's Highway1 page:

Online Support

American Honda Motor Co. says the four-and five-speed automatic transmission woes reported in last week's Highway 1 have occurred in just 1.6% of the 1 million Hondas and Acuras sold with those transmissions.
See that's what pisses me off. Honda's view is that there are only 1.6% of transmission problems and so that means they don't give a phuck. So, I guess because only 16,000 honda owners have transimission problems out of a million, that when it gets to like 25,000 is when they are going to do something about it. That is stupid even if it's a waste of money or not. I am beginning to think honda reps are :ghey: The corporate guys probably drive benzs or bmws anyway they probably don't give a phuck until a fatality is reported.
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Old Sep 18, 2002 | 03:16 PM
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A-cl.com gettin some props! Just hope we dont' shut down
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Old Sep 18, 2002 | 03:21 PM
  #5  
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I find it hard to believe that out of 16000 people with transmission failures not a SINGLE accident has been reported. I live in Atlanta, and travel I-285 all the time (considered by most analysts to be one of the worst stretches of interstate in the country) I know if I was doing 75 miles per hour, and there was a car that was keeping its normal Atlanta-Driver's-two-inch-margin from my rear bumper, and my car downshifted to second from 5th, I'd be roadfood. Disheartening that Honda Motor Company can just dismiss 16000 faulty transmissions (16000 gets a lot more attention than 1.6% since most people in the news-reading world aren't known math majors). I have been having a similar problem with my M5 (2000), been through 2 clutches in 30,000 miles. BMWNA warranted the first two @ two grand a piece, they said the next one is on me, and yet there is a petition with 115 OTHER M5 owners with the same problem...same B.S. story from BMW...not enough to be a problem. Guess its not going to be until someone hits either company where it hurts (their wallets in a lawsuit when a family member dies) that they are going to get off their lazy a$$es and do something about THEIR problems affecting THEIR customers (last time I checked...didnt we inevitably sign all these guys paychecks when we buy our cars??). Just my 2c worth...
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Old Sep 18, 2002 | 03:29 PM
  #6  
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Originally posted by AtlantaCLTypeS
I find it hard to believe that out of 16000 people with transmission failures not a SINGLE accident has been reported. I live in Atlanta, and travel I-285 all the time (considered by most analysts to be one of the worst stretches of interstate in the country) I know if I was doing 75 miles per hour, and there was a car that was keeping its normal Atlanta-Driver's-two-inch-margin from my rear bumper, and my car downshifted to second from 5th, I'd be roadfood.......
Keep in mind that only a few people have had that happen to them... not all 16k. Of all of the tranny problems on here and atl.com, only one or two have had it happen to that extreme... and none of them were going that fast. Still... it is a danger... but don't think that all 16k happened that way b/c they didn't.....
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Old Sep 18, 2002 | 04:07 PM
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American Honda Motor Co. says the four-and five-speed automatic transmission woes reported in last week's Highway 1 have occurred in just 1.6% of the 1 million Hondas and Acuras sold with those transmissions.
We should attempt to get them to give us a breakdown of the transmission failures by model and generation/year. This would paint a much more accurate picture for us. I'm sure they're including the four cylinder Accords here which of course makes American Honda Motor Co. look much better since these cars probably don't have enough torque in stock form to blow the trannies.
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Old Sep 18, 2002 | 04:11 PM
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Well done EricL...

I wrote to the author as welll... Never heard back, but it's good to see this is at least getting some recognition.
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Old Sep 18, 2002 | 04:25 PM
  #9  
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LOUD applaud to ALL those that made this AWARENESS take place ! This is just the beggining of the fault HONDA is accepting ! :P
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Old Sep 18, 2002 | 04:40 PM
  #10  
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I'm really stunned that Acura has not done something about damage control on this. People reading that there have been 16,000 tranny failures are not going to buy this car if they are looking for stability. At least to assure people by upping the warranty to 100,000 on the drive train.
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Old Sep 18, 2002 | 04:41 PM
  #11  
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sweet! go eric
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Old Sep 18, 2002 | 04:46 PM
  #12  
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woohoo, nice one Eric webmaster
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Old Sep 18, 2002 | 05:27 PM
  #13  
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If you guys take a look at the Transmission Problems board, you'll see that copland007 just had his new transmission go out on him after 512 miles. This is so pathetic.

http://www.acura-cl.com/forums/showt...threadid=78841
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Old Sep 18, 2002 | 07:41 PM
  #14  
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Originally posted by Astroboy
woohoo, nice one Eric webmaster

Yeah, I should send you the copy of the original letter sent to the editor...

Webmaster == Moderator ???

NO tranny problems?????
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Old Sep 18, 2002 | 07:50 PM
  #15  
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Originally posted by Rod
We should attempt to get them to give us a breakdown of the transmission failures by model and generation/year. This would paint a much more accurate picture for us. I'm sure they're including the four cylinder Accords here which of course makes American Honda Motor Co. look much better since these cars probably don't have enough torque in stock form to blow the trannies.
I believe the 4-bangers were excluded (so I was told). However, does anyone think that Acura just "lumps" ALL of the specs into one bin for the V6 engines????

I'm sure they are sorry that they didn't have a non-VTEC 1.2L V6 that could have been included in the stats provided to the LATimes. (A bunch of 80HP/80lb-ft eco-hybrids would have been a wonderful addition to the aggregate stats...)
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Old Sep 18, 2002 | 09:38 PM
  #16  
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GO WEBMASTER ERIC!!

Hmm no tranny problems though? Weird that they would say that since so many of us had problems.
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Old Sep 19, 2002 | 02:06 AM
  #17  
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Hey guys just wanted to say that I hope you all participated too. I sent this email to the editor to make sure he saw accordv6.com's poll where 30% had a tranny replaced atleast once and this website so he could see the issues involved were more than he had written about. Once the story was on accordv6.com I replied to the author of the story and posted the thread so everyone could read it.


http://v6accord.com/forums/showthrea...5&pagenumber=3

Mr. Odell,

Your article that was placed onto the internet titled, Honda's Unexpected Gear Shift was posted on a website called www.accordv6.com were there are 2200+ members to date. What you may be interested is that we held a poll for 98-02 Accord V6's about a month ago with that same transmission in question you have wrote about. Out of the 200+ that has actually taken the poll, 30% of the members on our board so far have logged in and said that they have had a transmission replaced. Many of the people have had them replaced no questions asked, but many dealerships are blaming aftermarket parts that are installed, so they do not have to eat the cost of replacement and will attempt to void our warranties.

I have included the poll for you.

http://v6accord.com/forums/showthre...=&threadid=1603
The way the site was setup you may not see the poll unless you register, so to make it easy, I will submit the results.

Has Your AV6 Tranny Died?

NO - No Problems Whatsoever 70.81%
YES - Heavy Abuse 2.39%
YES - Moderate Abuse 6.70%
YES - Spirited Driving / Extreme Conditions 5.26%
YES - Minor Abuse 7.18 %
YES - Road Hazard 1.44%
YES - Got Me ?!?!?! 3.35%
YES - Other 2.87%

In my situation I am showing the very first signs of failure. A normal running Honda Auto 4 speed transmission will shift if floored at about 6200 rpms (at redline). My transmission in first gear will shift at 6600, well into the redline and hitting the rev limiter. This is something that may happen to a stick shift transmission to a driver not paying attention, not for an automatic.

On the behalf of www.accordv6.com we would all like to thank you for writing this column. If you need any information on this situation in the future check out these sites. This has been something that a lot of owners have been fighting with Honda about since 1998 transmissions came out not 2000.

www.accordv6.com
www.acura-cl.com

Thanks,
Garrett Gauer
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Old Sep 19, 2002 | 02:39 AM
  #18  
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Whoa, in the paper, that is SWEEEEEEEEEEETTTTTTT!!!!
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Old Sep 19, 2002 | 03:15 AM
  #19  
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Originally posted by AtlantaCLTypeS
I find it hard to believe that out of 16000 people with transmission failures not a SINGLE accident has been reported. I live in Atlanta, and travel I-285 all the time (considered by most analysts to be one of the worst stretches of interstate in the country) I know if I was doing 75 miles per hour, and there was a car that was keeping its normal Atlanta-Driver's-two-inch-margin from my rear bumper, and my car downshifted to second from 5th, I'd be roadfood. Disheartening that Honda Motor Company can just dismiss 16000 faulty transmissions (16000 gets a lot more attention than 1.6% since most people in the news-reading world aren't known math majors). I have been having a similar problem with my M5 (2000), been through 2 clutches in 30,000 miles. BMWNA warranted the first two @ two grand a piece, they said the next one is on me, and yet there is a petition with 115 OTHER M5 owners with the same problem...same B.S. story from BMW...not enough to be a problem. Guess its not going to be until someone hits either company where it hurts (their wallets in a lawsuit when a family member dies) that they are going to get off their lazy a$$es and do something about THEIR problems affecting THEIR customers (last time I checked...didnt we inevitably sign all these guys paychecks when we buy our cars??). Just my 2c worth...
How would that kind of information be made public, unless you work for the national highway transportation safety and knew about it? It's awfully tough considering that kind of data is kept among insurance companies and perhaps even under wraps because of impending litigation.

I'm sure there are cases of accidents...and I'm sure Acura Customer Relations has heard/logged these cases. But not all of the customers affected have come forward and reported their stories here or any other public front.
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