Longranger44

So after months of lurking on this site I finally got an account. I recently bought a 2000 TL with 180k miles that has a transmission issue. I know, shocking. This car shifts pretty well overall but has this nasty habit of sometimes shuddering in 3rd gear. It seems to only happen in 3rd gear and will lurch the car back and forth pretty good while it's happening, sometimes lasting for 5 seconds or more if you keep it in third. However it's very intermittent and you can go a long time without it happening. It will also do like a single smaller lurch forward or back when you're cruising down the highway. But it only does it one at a time, not back and forth shuddering like it does in 3rd gear. Hope I'm explaining it clearly. It does this very often while cruising in 5th gear and having it in manual shift mode doesn't make any difference. In my layman opinion it kind of feels like the torque converter is locking and unlocking, very rapidly over and over in 3rd, and single locks and unlocks once in a while during highway cruising. But I don't know much about auto trannies and this is just my uneducated guess.

So this car evidently was worked on my Acura at some point as it has the oil jet installed in the transmission fill plug. I did the 3x3 procedure with genuine dw-1, the old fluid was very dark. Also changed the screw in canister tranny filter and cleaned the screens for the two groups of tranny solenoids that have multiple solenoids grouped together (didn't remove the single ones that are up top and harder to get at). The screens of the ones I cleaned were not plugged up at all and were quite clean already. Doing this made no noticeable improvement in the symptoms described above. Am I on the right track with my line of thinking regarding the torque converter? And if so, is there anything that can be done about it? (Besides an av6 swap lol)

Thanks in advance!

zeta

iTrader: (1)

It sounds like you have done all of your research and exercised all of the available reasonable processes in regards to the 3X3, ATF filter change and solenoid screen cleanings to try and make a difference in its performance.
Though, one would think with such dramatic 3rd gear shuddering there would be a DTC(s) triggered by the ECU?
Finally, with the recent purchase of a 24 year old car, you are not going to realize any kind of consistent long term trouble free utility until your current transmission is either rebuilt or you opt for an AV6 BAYA non-hybrid swap.

Jon M

From the description there isn't much you can do without some major work. Your description of 3rd gear matches what I know about these transmissions. Guessing I would think you need a new (or rebuilt) TC and Tranny. Since it is always the same gear it points to the tranny as you have already determined. As Zeta asked is there any codes or pending codes?