I'm driving home tonight and I accellerate about 3/4 power in auto. First to second shift is a little sluggish. Then at 70, my car "TRYS" to shift to 3rd and the rpms stayed at 6500 for about 2 seconds and then the tranny jerked into 3rd. I thought this was kinda bad, so I slowed down to 40 and switched into SS mode. I downshifted 5th to 4th, no issues. 4th to 3rd, no problem. Then 3rd to 2nd, tranny revs up a little and then shifts into 2nd. I floored it and got it up to 6500 rpms and tried to shift into 3rd. The tranny stays at ~7000 rpms for ~ 1sec and then shifts to 3rd so hard the tires light up. Now my car rarely breaks loose in the 1st to 2nd shift, so was a hard shift. After this i decided to just leave the car in SS in 5th gear, get it home, and then take it to the dealer tommorow. Well i'm on the interstate on the way home, and i try to downshift to 4th to pass a truck, and as soon as I tap the shifter down the car revs up to ~7000 rpms and almost snaps my neck, and then it dropped into 4th, the tires lit up (just a quick squeal) and my head snaps back into the headrest. So now I've got a headache and I know my tranny is prob dead. A little farther up the road I try the downshift from 5th to 4th again and the same thing happens. So I leave the car in 5th for the rest of the ride home up the interstate. I'm pissed at this point. Well when I got off the highway and was pulling up to a stoplight the tranny jerked into and out of gear as it downshifted through all the gears. When went to pull off from the stoplight the tranny had MAJOR issues going into 1st and then 2nd. At this point the check engine light, and the VSA light turned on. I tried the VSA button, but that did not work.


So tommorow I'm gonna try and limp the car to the dealership. DAMN IT. I've only got 40,000 miles on the car. This sucks. This is one club i did not want to join.


Oh, well. Anyone who has had their tranny fail have any suggestions as to stuff I should know, or should insist on from the dealer? Will I get the same tranny, or is there an upgrade?

Thanks for any advice

 

Yes, it does indeed SUCK! Don't feel too bad. In my opinion, everyone with a CL is eventually going to join this "club" if they keep the car long enough. Some might be lucky and get 100,000 miles out of the CL with no tranny problems. Others have them die with only 2000 miles on the car. I've said it a number of times and I'll say it again. There is a design flaw with these trannies and they will all fail eventually. I think the majority of them will fail before 100,000. I guess only time will tell but I'm positive this issue is only starting to heat up. It seems to me as more and more time goes by there are even greater numbers of dead trannies being reported. This could be partly due to higher membership on this forum but it would also have a lot to do with CL's getting older.

 

That's sucks. What's your driving style, how many times you floor it?? Do you go offten beyond 4,000 RPM??

Have you changed your trans fluid at 15K miles? were you driving city or highway most of the time?

I've had my car for 2years, 22K miles, runs perfect. Don't mind low miles, I drive offten in the city in stop & go traffic. Most of my miles are city.


When I had my oil changed at dealership, I think I heard dealer talking about transmission. ( I could not understand whether it was related to the failure or just maintance ) But I got concerned they were talking about it.

I rember in 90s there was Ford Tauras, it had tranny flaw... and all transmissions would fail between 80-90K miles. It was pretty much 99% chance that your tranny would die.


If the problem is that big, i can't belive Acura is not doing shit about it..... I was always thinking that big names like Acura would always take responsibility for their mistakes....

I love the car, I hope tranny failures are bellow 3%.

 

Well on saturday I took the car to the dealership and they said the tranny was dead. They are going to order me a new one under warrenty and gave me a 2002 TL-S to drive

 

Mine just died Sat. night. I called the 1-800 number on the windshield and they came and they took my car to the shop. I had the same shifting problems. I noticed at first that it would hesitate to go into 3rd gear. And then when I would put it into reverse it would take a few seconds and then there would be a loud clunk when it went into gear. I first decided I would drive it to the dealership, but at every light I stopped at it would get worse. It got to where it really didn't want to shift into second or third. The rpm's would rev up and then it would jerk into gear. So that's when I pulled in a parking lot and had them come get it. Right now I have about 21k miles on it. I hope the problems stop with these transmissions or I will be another owner that will get out before 50k.

 

These damn things are dying at an alarming rate!!

But all you people with working trannies can keep convincing yourselves that there there is no higher percentage of tranny problems with the CL.

 

2-3% tops! Yes its a problem.