Yesterday I took my wife's lovely blue RL in for its first service since we bought it back in June(6120 miles). Standard stuff: oil change; rotate the tires; align the steering wheel;fix a couple of outstanding items from delivery; and I asked them to investigate the bad odor she was complaining about during the first 5 minutes of driving the car on her way to teach HS each morning. Other than that the car was really starting to break in nicely and she really, really, loves it. BREAK... I get a call from the service writer and he informs me that they found out what was causing the bad smell...its a leak of transmissiion fluid (seems we are 1 quart low) onto the exhaust, but they can't find it and will inject dye to see if they can locate the leak. I stopped by this afternoon, but still nothing. BREAK BREAK .... Well, I just got a call and it seems that they still can't locate the problem, but after talking to Acura, they are going to drop the tranny tomorrow, put on a new front seal, pressurize the system .... and if it still leaks .... replace the tranny. They think it might have been damaged at the factory, and if so, Acura wants it back in Japan.

Needless to say I am less than enthused! I worry about problems later on but they assure me no damage has been done to the transmission because of all the extra fluid in the sump. How can they know that without looking inside?

Well, has anyone else had this problem and how was it resolved by Acura. This is our first Acura, and we absolutely love the car, but I am now nervous.

 

Sorry for the bad news. Acura is notorious for bad trannys. The 2G TLs were plauged by them

 

Sorry to hear that. It sounds like they are going to get it taken care of though. I can't say that I have that problem on my car (purchased in January) but I will have it looked into this Thursday when my car goes in for service.

 

I doubt 1 qt low for such a short period of time will ruin the tranny. If the transmission was damaged at the factory, are they saying that they want the entire car shipped back to Japan?

 

No, they just want the tranny back in Japan if the leak is somewhere other than at the front seal.