grab a cup of coffee and follow me on my journey.

i began by confirming an order with dr. evil / road master transmission in june 2006. i was told they could not do a core exchange with my because the transmission model number did not match anything they are familiar with, this meant sending my physical transmission to them. ok, we removed it and their courier picked it up. they received the transmission not because they told me, but because i had to call to make sure it was received. during their opening of it never ONCE did they mention anything was missing that they needed. he described the condition of the transmission, i asked for a full written analysis so that i could have a record, i received nothing. i would also like to note that the transmission sat around for a week at their facility because they were installing a new transmission dyno. i dont know why they couldnt just run mine on the old one. also i was worried they werent familiar enough with the new one yet. needless to say i got my transmission back after about 4 weeks.

it looked good, the torque converter was painted red and the bellhousing was painted silver. but it was painted with all the sensor on so the sensors were covered in silver paint.

upon installation the torque converter did not match the flywheel. the torque converter was far too small. i contacted dr. evil and he asked for me to send it back. i overnighted the torque converter and 2 CL-S flywheels (just to make sure on our part) at my expense. i once again had to call to make sure he received them, and he admitted it was the wrong torque converter. i had to wait an additional week because they could not find the right converter. he said they got a new torque converter and send it out to get rebuilt.

so now we had the right torque converter and our flywheels back. everything bolted up just fine, but we noticed something strange. the neutral safety switch was missing. i contacted dr. evil and asked if he knew anything about it. his reaction was simply, we sent back the transmission how we received it. BUT he claims EVERY sensor and solenoid was replaced. so where is my neutral safety switch? my shop had no reason to remove that single sensor. we ordered a new neutral safety switch. not to knit pick, but the dipstick was also not sent back. this had to be ordered as well per my expense.

finally we had the car up and running again. we had issues getting the neutral safety switch set up initially, but it was figured out. sometime early august 06 it was complete and the car ran fantastically. ALSO my motor was rebuilt at the same, so i did not even engage vtec for almost 1,000 miles. the brand new tranny was broken in properly. i did not beat on it because both the motor and tranny were brand new. they were not abused.

sometime at the end of october of 06, the car was acting up. ocassionally when i would come to a stop, the car would 'slip' out of gear as if in neutral, and it would just rev. it would not engage back into gear unless i put it into 2nd gear manually. i wanted to eliminate any other possible problems before i blamed dr. evil. i brought it to multiple places and we analyzed the car over and we fixed other things. NOTE at this time, we did not receive ANY codes for the transmission on both code readers and professional scanners. we pulled up a couple codes for the catalytic converter and o2 sensors, all of which were fixed. by december of 06 the problem was still there, but the car was free of any codes. i finally contacted dr. evil.

i described my problem and he said to check out the VSS (Vehicle Speed Sensor). Our cars have 2 on the transmission. So i brought the car in and we checked the wiring for the VSS. All was fine, so we replaced the 2 sensors. The problem was still very apparent. Saturday, December 30th, days after speaking to Dr. Evil and replacing the speed sensors, my car threw a code. P0740. Holidays made times tough to get into a shop. I pulled the code with my reader. January 2nd I contacted dr. evil. I did not get a reply until Jan 3rd. I had left my cell phone, but i had no missed calls or voice mails from him. I told him the code i pulled and he still insisted on electrical problems.

I brought it to a local transmission shop where they pulled 2 or 3 codes. I contacted Dr. Evil again informing this of him. He get infuriated that i didn't tell him i wasnt using a scanner initially. When in reality it had been LESS THAN ONE WEEK since the CEL had initially came on and the car was driven VERY little. He said i probably made things worse and that it wasn't his fault. I told him I could not wait 2-3 weeks for the whole warranty process, but that i thought it was reasonable that i get some reimbursement for simply the R&R and/or shipping & handling. He refused all of this and said that he only warranties the work on the transmission itself. That's where our conversation ended as he hung up on me. Needless to say i'm not dealing with them anymore, and i don't recommend anyone else to either.

 

Bummer. Is this on the 5 speed? and had they said they actually had a fix for the 5 speed when you talked to them?

Time for a 6 speed swap? Ive got the info for ya

 

I asked more than once if they had previously worked on the 5 speed automatic and if they were sure they could fix them. They assured me I would not have any issues.

6 speed swap is not in the future for me right now, i do not have the time and money to do that. I am paying a shop locally to fix the automatic for now. I just need a working car. I dont have the time for swapping stuff right now.

 

Jeremy is a pretty fair and understanding person. I have to believe there is some serious negligence on the part of Dr. Evil for it to go this far. I hope everything works out for you.

Don't get discouraged though. It could be a lot worse.

 

Damn...that sucks. Are you going to push the issue of reimbursement? I can't imagine that it was cheap having them rebuild and paying for all the shipping back and forth. Good luck.

 

once this new shop looks it over, i will be contacting BBB

 

I was turned off by them when they wouldnt even hint to me what they did to make it "bullet proof" or what they did to solve the problem. I asked many times when my 5th trans failed many times but they wouldnt revile to me any thing and in the end i told them that with out them telling me what they did or what they would do to solve the problem i would not spend that much money on their trans. I was not happy with them then and i still dont recommend them. I went 6 speed manual instead.

 

DR. EVIL as the name is eneough to turn me off from going there.

 

There used to be someone on AZ who couldn't stop singing the praises of Dr Evil and would argue with anyone who asked even a question. Wonder where he is now.

 

yeah, AV6ent (i think). he was a bit arrogant. that is a shame though, CleanCL. i was really hoping this would be the light at the end of the tunnel for us. perhaps there is a simple answer though. are you guys positive this couldn't in any way be related to the troubles you had with the neutral switch? i know on my ford how it worked exactly and that it couldn't have been the problem you describe but i don't know if it works differently on an acura, so bear with me if this has allready been hashed out.

 

the only thing the neutral safety switch would do if it is out of wack is not a allow the car physically into gear properly, meaning actually putting the shifter into Drive. the car goes into any gear just fine with the shifter.

 

Wow, it took 4 weeks to get the transmission back?!? Did you have a rental or a secondary car? That is such a horrible experience! If my tranny goes, Dr. Evil won't be an option for me.

 

Sorry to hear that. Yeah - Hondas & Acuras basically use two different torque converters the HO-12 and the HO-21. The latter of the two is a bit bigger and is used on our cars as well as the Odyssey. They probably sent you the HO-12 used on the four bangers and older transmissions. The difference is really only like an inch or so in diameter - but that's certainly enough that it won't bolt on.

They painted the transmission - including the sensors? Did they get paint inside the plugs?

Sucks to hear about their bad service, and I hope things work out in the end for you.

 

ok, that's just as i suspected. i'm sure it also engages the 4 or 5 grand rev limiter in park and neutral. i wasn't sure if honda used it to feed any other sort of sensors and whatnot.

 

I had Dr Evil on my list of upgrades when my transmission goes out of warranty. After reading about this travesty of incompetence, I will not consider them. Thanks for sharing your story. Nobody deserves to go through an ordeal such as this. The down time, costs, and anxiety is truly staggering. I hope that you are able to to get some satisfaction or at a minimum, a working transmission.

As for Dr. Evil: What comes around, goes around.

 

How much is the total bill for the Dr. Evil job ?

 

Perhaps the 2005 changes Acura made to the transmission respresent the light at the end of the tunnel.

And hopefully the light is not an another train travelling in the opposite direction.

Bob

 

Sorry about the whole ordeal but at least now the thousands of TL owners know about this.

What happened to that one guy who was vouching for the Dr. Evil tranny? AV6ent or something like that? Claimed he didn't work for Dr. Evil... right, after posting page after page defending their trannys.

 

update: my tranny shop now says this was put together terribly, there are 2 filters on the transmission and he said it doesnt look like they were ever changed, they were clogged up and looked original. he said the oil system was being starved. he said the torque converter looks like something out of a junkyard. he mentioned a lot of other things, but i plan to have a full description by tomorrow or saturday.

 

Get them to take pictures and document everything. You will need proof.

 

How much does a 6 speed conversion cost?

 

id say close to 3,000. but i dont have time to source the parts. i need the car up and running as soon as possible.

 

FYI - If the neutral safety switch on our cars goes out, you'll notice that the gear display light will go out. If you wiggle the shifter it may come back on again.

 

it cost me about 5500-6k with type-s motor

 

Make sure like Excelerate said, to get them to take pics and document things. I would use that info to go after them and get my money back

 

X2

 

that sucks to hear bro. i was thinking about doing my tranny if in case i do decide to keep my TL. sorry to hear about your troubles. i wish some of these companies would deal with customer service a little better. i know some companies will bend over backwards for customers to help them out. wish Dr. Evil did the same. good luck!!! thanks for the info.

 

thanks for the info, I was considering Dr. Evil.

 

any updates?

 

???????????

 

what do you want to be updated about? my dealings w/ dr. evil? i don't plan on posting that online any time soon. this thread was just to inform the general public of this experience with dr. evil. take it as you will. maybe i got unlucky and it was a defective unit and maybe the nexy 10,000 will be perfect. who knows? i'm not trying to cause anymore trouble for dr. evil. as of right now things are going slow. i have a lot of other things on my plate, school, work, and family situations, the car is not the main priority at the moment.

 

ohhh I feel your pain i have the SAME EXACT PROBLEM with my TL
it throws itself into neutral....i'll turn out of my street and end up rolling down the street my car won't go into gear...
I HAD TO REBUILD MY TRANSMISSION at my OWN expense....they said my vins didn't match the defective transmissions...complete bullshit but what ever
I took it back because I was having this problem
and its STILL DOING THIS...
glad to know i'm not the only one...

 

That is lousy. Hope it all works out for you.

 

Well it would work out better if anyone knew what exact part makes the transmission throw itself into neutral so i can tell the shop because they don't believe me and they dont know what to do....because honda canada are a bunch of assholes and won't help me fix this problem...
my car isn' t considered effected....sure it just has the same problem its just such a coincidence...

 

Well for starters if the shop cant figure out or know why it did what it did i would find a different shop.

2 the failure in this thread is about a trans shop that was supposed to build a bullet proof trans, not a factory trans failing.

The problem lies in the 3rd gear clutch packs. They wear out quickly. Once they wear out excessive heat is caused, causing them to not be able to hold in that gear. the material plugs solenoids causing lack of pressure which wont allow pressure to hold in gear (that and once it heats up enough the ecu tells the trans not to do any thing till its coo) Thats why many have found the next day they go to drive the car and it seems just fine

You may want to read thru this thread. There is info scattered through out it
https://acurazine.com/forums/wash-wax-23/leather-conditioner-help-106818/

 

I can't goto another transmission shop the warranty won't let me...
I'm definately not paying twice for a service that should of been done in the first place by ACURA, but of course they don't want to take responsibilty for their mistakes...
I changed the clutch packs on the car, the oil jet kit etc etc...it was basically a full transmission overhaul...15 days my car spent at that shop...i'm just so fed up with trying to call all these places, they don't listen they just like to take your money...

 

Well if it failed and is under warranty with the place that rebuilt it whats the issue?

 

I would but I won't take it until I know the exact problem, because I had to pay the rental the last time and it came out to $650 I can't be throwing around money like that for stupid rentals

 

So your saying if its not dead when you bring it in they wont fix it or look at it? So whats your issue? it just sometimes acts up like that? when its acting up bring it to the shop and demand they go for a test ride with you

 

Save the troubles, just sell the car. What's worse than driving a car everyday with which you're so upset about.