Quietly Making Lots Of Transmissions - Honda Transmission Manufacturing of America - Company Profile - Statistical Data Included
Automotive Manufacturing & Production, Sept, 2001 by Kermit Whitfield

YOU'O THINK THAT A PLANT IN OHIO THAT PRODUCES ALMOST A MILLION TRANSMISSIONS PER YEAR WOULD BE WELL KNOWN. BUT HAVE YOU HEARO OF HONDA TRANSMISSION MFG. OF AMERICA? WE DIDN'T THINK SO. HERE'S AN INTRODUCTION.

At Christmastime, 1996, while most Honda workers in Ohio were engaged in the rigors of the holiday season, an unlucky few were shepherding 90 truckloads of equipment from Honda's Anna Engine Plant to what was then Bellemar Parts Industries (Russell's Point, OH). Their challenge was to transfer Anna's transmission manufacturing capabilities in less than two weeks and provide an uninterrupted flow of parts to their customers? They succeeded and marked their transformation by becoming Honda Transmission Mfg. of America (HTM). Within two years, HTM surpassed the output of its mother plant in Japan, making it the largest automatic transmission production center for Honda in the world. HTM's history is long and circuitous.

It began life as Bellemar (a name derived from the two closest cities to the plant, Bellefontaine and Marysville) in 1982 with a plant that was located beside the then-brand new Marysville Auto Plant, Honda's first auto manufacturing facility. (In fact, it was Honda's first North American auto parts supplier.) Over its 14-year history, Bellemar produced and eventually spun off myriad different parts such as seats, tire assemblies, exhaust systems, brake and fuel lines, and catalytic converters, before being bought by Honda and beginning its career as a transmission specialist.

The HTM plant is a telling example of Honda's skill at packing a lot of production capacity into a small footprint; The 300,000-[ft.sup.2] facility casts and machines aluminum transmission and torque converter cases and valve bodies, and assembles complete transmissions all under one roof. It produces 4-speed transmissions for the Civic, Accord, and Odyssey models, as well as a more sophisticated 5-speed for the Acura TL, CL and MDX. HTM is on track to produce 930,000 transmissions this year, including those for Honda of Alabama Mfg. which will begin producing Odyssey minivans this fall.

Coaxing more production out of existing equipment, much of which is over 10 years old, is a daily exercise for the people at HTM. Each department has its own approach, but all mix judicious investment in automation (or de-automation) to remove identified bottlenecks with clever engineering that does more with less.

Casting More

Increased productivity in HTM's casting department begins with the design of the dies themselves. Honda utilizes an intricate die cooling system with more cooling lines than is typical for such dies, and the coolant in those lines is kept at a constant 50 by a chiller system. The colder dies mean faster cycle times. A supplier that makes the same part but uses a tower that only brings the coolant to 80 has a cycle time of 78 seconds. HTM's is 60 seconds.

Similarly, HTM has in effect cut cycle times in half in the casting of the transmission's servo body by employing a two-cavity die that makes two parts in one shot. Assuring the proper flow of molten metal is more difficult to achieve with a two-cavity die, but HTM proudly points out that their scrap rate is even lower than their counterpart plant in Japan, though that facility only uses a one-cavity die. Part of the reason for HTM's casting success, is the constant tinkering of its engineers trying to eke out more efficiency. Steve Pape, an engineering coordinator in the Casting Department, says, "On almost every run we try something different: For example, today we tried a new type of shot tip to push the aluminum through. It has a ceramic-coated steel tip that we hope will give us better sealing and lower porosity than the beryllium-copper tip we now use.

MacHining More

In the machining department, HTM has increased capacity the old fashioned way: by adding a new line. But it has also reduced cycle time by replacing humans with part loading robots, and increased flexibility by ousting old hydraulic robots in favor of new simple and more agile electric robots. However, one of the biggest boons to the department's productivity is the result of the greater accuracy with which parts it machines are cast and forged. A good example of this is the one-step reaming of the valve body and torque converter case. In the past, the parts had to be drilled before reaming, but the castings are accurate enough now that the drilling operation has been eliminated, freeing up machining capacity for other things (like the complex 4-wheel-drive transmission and torque converter cases that require far more operations, than their 2-wheel-drive counterparts).

AssemBLIng More

The assembly department is reducing down time and increasing throughput by pursuing what seems to be a growing trend: de-automation. That is, they are replacing complex, fully-automated assembly machines with much simpler ones that are human-guided. A case in point is the nutrunner machine for the transmission case. The old machine was completely automatic, but would experience downtime whenever a bolt was misaligned. The new machine is moved into place by a line worker ,who can quickly detect and fix any misalignments. And reducing downtime is particularly important right now since one of HTM's two assembly lines is running flat out at 2,000 units per day and the other will ramp up by 20% from 1,600 to 2,000 units per day by the end of 2001.

NexT STep: Transmission cenTer

According to Dan Holbrook, vice president/general manager of HTM, the company's main goal right now is to become the automatic transmission center for North America, as laid out in Honda's global strategy. This means it must go beyond manufacturing and bolster its capabilities in product engineering and market quality analysis. The idea is to have a staff of engineers who can quickly diagnose problems that show up in the market and use their knowledge to expedite countermeasures and influence future transmission designs. HTM already has some experience in this area. Its engineers meet on a weekly basis with Honda R&D members and Honda of America Mfg.'s parts purchasing staff to discuss problems and fixes. But this fall these activities will be accelerated when HTM opens a new technical center that is currently under construction beside its plant.

The technical center will have a workshop for the installation and removal of transmissions, an analysis room where they can be disassembled and examined, and a component testing room. Eventually, the center will install a dynamometer for endurance testing.

Though the operations that will be performed in the technical center are pretty straightforward, the building itself will be anything but. HTM is installing such eco-friendly technologies as increased insulation, geothermal heating, skylights, and advanced digital temperature control systems. David Schmitt, the engineer who heads up the technical center project, says that the goal of the building is to cut energy needs in half when compared to the traditional edifice they could be building. HTM is taking on the added complexity of eco-construction partly to demonstrate its dedication to Honda's green factory program, but also to add its own unique twist to its expanding role. And taking the initiative to create what may be the most ecologically sound facility in Honda's global network, may be just what is expected from a transmission center.

COPYRIGHT 2001 Gardner Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group

 

That's Honda exactly. A few transmission problems aside, that plant does an awesome job. 930,000 units a year, that's flat out awesome. I am proud to work for Honda!

 

Absolutely impressive number's here. I can see why you are so proud.


How many do other transmission manufacturing faciltie's produce a year? I think it said they are like double ,but may have misread ,would you say that is about right that Honda doubles their transmission manufacturing as oposed to competitor's production trates?



Also curious if they can produce a million a year ...how many Cars do Honda actually build a year ? For instance if they manufacture 1 million transmissions a year do they manufacture 1 million cars a year as well ...? or do they manufacture less car's and have an abundance of transmission readily on hand?

 

EH03TL,



I am so glad to confer with you ,I was wondering ..in 1995 Honda bought 7 patent rights from Ramoun antonov .These patent's were for a new transmission design. These transmission's were said to be able to be installed and used in any honda model car ..SUV/ 4 cyl/6cyl ..it did not matter . These transmission's were top work off of 2 or 3 gears and have no need for a torque converter....this was the fuel saving and no cut in power feature's ..Selling feature's you may say.

The other great thing about these tranmssions is that ANY manufacturing pllant could manufacture these transmissions with absolutely no adjustment's in the plant's what so ever....(ie) Theircurrent machinary would not need altered at all and production could start immediately.


The Honda plant post from 2001 that I submitted states that :::::::::::::::::::::::

At Christmastime, "1996," while most Honda workers in Ohio were engaged in the rigors of the holiday season, an unlucky few were shepherding 90 truckloads of equipment from Honda's Anna Engine Plant to what was then Bellemar Parts Industries (Russell's Point, OH). Their challenge was to transfer Anna's transmission manufacturing capabilities in less than two weeks and provide an uninterrupted flow of parts to their customers? They succeeded and marked their transformation by becoming Honda Transmission Mfg. of America (HTM). Within two years, HTM surpassed the output of its mother plant in Japan, making it the largest automatic transmission production center for Honda in the world. HTM's history is long and circuitous.






************************************************** **********************

So the copy above from that post states that in 1996 these unlu ky workers were transfering truckloads of transmissions to this manufacturing facility ..I am just curious ...is there any connection to the NEW Transmissions that Honda bought 7 patents for and could use in ANY of the cars that honda manufactuers in 1995 to the move they made to this RAPID production manufacturing facility in 1996 ......????

 

Christ...930,000 transmission per year !!!??

Thats over 2500 per day!

 

thats why honda is so great

 

I agree ..... I mean when you can kick out numbers like that with no shortcut's and still have a dependable working quality product... that is indeed impressive.


Some manufacture's have run into problems trying to manufacture mass quantity production by cutting quality and dependibility ,thus leaving the door open to risk /safety /liability . If a co can do these numbers and keep all that later in check ..more power to them!

 

that is also the reason honda is one of the only car manufactures (other than toyota) to make impressive $$ gains every year and not loose mone like the big 3 here in the us

 

hahaha... I was waiting for some people to respond. I was too lazy to read the entire post! Holy crap! That is a lot of trannys... I just hope the gearbox they put in my car is one of the good ones!

 

fsttyms1
Registered User




Join Date: Aug 2002
Location: wisconsin
Posts: 7,518
that is also the reason honda is one of the only car manufactures (other than toyota) to make impressive $$ gains every year and not loose mone like the big 3 here in the us














Yes ,so true again...... I guess thats why the transmission problem from 99-04 hasn't really effected them...I mean if you have massive quantity's of these at hand ......and they are able to manufacture them at 40% less cost then other manufacture's ....I can see why replacing the tranmission's was more cost effective for them.


I hope the tecnician from Ohio Honda manufacturing plant comes back as I am very curious as to the 1995 patent Honda purchased from Antonov and to have him notify me wether the 1996 scurry to get truckloads of equip/trans/ect tothe new plant are just coincidental.

 

FSTTYS1

Huh ....You wrote this?


************yes the last time i had one put in by them at 115k they said every thing was updated and it wouldnt happen again. i know i have high miles, but trannies are supposed to last mor than 45k at a crack. like i said, i wasnt asking for them to buy the car back. offer me a deal or something on the tranny. im not going to spend 4+k on a tranny that i gaurentee they didnt fix. and then to come out and and lie to me saying that they dont have a tranny issue, is like a slap in the face. their customer support is just unwiling to do any thing for their customers.

they can extend the warranty on something they know is bad to 100k, but give you nothing for a warranty on what they replace it with!***************



I thought you were totally infatuated with the Honda transmissions and their ability to mass produce them like mice !


You know ..Since Honda has so many transmission's stockpiled and building 2500 every day ! Can they not spare another???????????? Good GOSH!

 

A few Transmission problems aside??? GIVE ME A BREAK!!!!
You have a huge fucking disaster at the plant if you manufacture TL transmissions.
Take some time to read the posts here and you can see what the plant is producing...I hate to use the word "shit" but nothing else pops up in my mind at the moment.
Sorry to be so hard but losing $6-10 K on a car's resale and owning a defective luxry car just kinda pisses me off..

 

Jazzpicker................


Hope you are reading between the lines.................. The resale value is important to you ....thats understood.......how about the risk/safety.......issue .............But againn let me just state .......if you can keep up mass production,without cutting corners.............and still produce safe transmission's ???


The bigg question is ....why would you NEED to produce 2500 transmissions on a daily basis ......if your not producing half that number of cars/mini vans/suv's to install them into ?????????????


Why have a mass amount at hand ????????????? I mean is there a point when production takes a rest ..because there isn't enough room to store them .or ARE the transmissions going out as fast as their being produced .....................are they selling them to other DEALERS??????????


With the patent rights .................that were purchased ...I suppose that was the main goal ...for them to produce transmissions to the other dealer /makes ............WHO knows ...but someone would only try to produce mass numbers of something for stockpiling if they needed it for reserve ...just like some company's will sell truckloads of water when there is say a hurricane warning .....................


Do the math......... If you produced transmissions' at a rate of 2500 daily and you had the ability to make them 40% Cheaper then competetor's and had a good selling feature...such as the compactness/ price reduction/ ect....... You could make a firtune off distributing them! To ALL car maker's... And if they are defective...................well you can alway's just give them a new one ....because they are so darn cheap to make ..............there is no dollar loss in comparrison to what they are making off them ... Well if I had first exclusive patent rights to something ,thats what I'd do ....



Yes read between the lines..

 

O.k. I'll bite.

When I bought my 03' TL-S (mfg. in Feb. 03') the window sticker (I still have it) said clearly that 85% of the parts in the car were made in the USA. O.k. fine. The remaining 15% were made in Japan and noted that that part(s) is was the transmission! I don't get it.

 

My 03/04 tl's both say transmission ( Japan) I Still have both window stickers'.... Honda's patent rights they purchased may not transfer to Japan ? They were USA patents ...Could that contribute???????????


Some people on the police force aren't allowed to work outside the county where they live..however that doesn't mean there aren't ways around THAT...I know people on the force who are in that predicament ...they GET around it~!



Just keep asking yourself ..WHY 2500 transmissions daily ...

 

Within two years, HTM surpassed the output of its mother plant in Japan, making it the largest automatic transmission production center for Honda in the world. HTM's history is long and circuitous.
************************************************** *******************************


So we see HTM has surpassed the production of transmissions of their mother palnt in Japan. Now HTM is producing 930,000 tansmissions a year ,2500 daily.... Where are the tranmissions from the mother plant in Japan going??? From my window sticker ,they went in both my car's. So if say Japan palnt produces half as many tranmsisions ...are ALL the Japan mad tranny's going to the Honda cars and the HTM plant that are producing trannys like field mice going to other car makers ... ??


People ............ it looks as though HONDA CORP...found something more profitable then building and selling cars... Their famous Transmission appears to have the ability to make them much more money!

 

The answer, quite simply, is that they are producing that number of cars/minivans and SUVs:

Using year-to-date 2004 U.S. sales figures released by Honda for the month of August and adding only models listed in the article (those whose transmissions are manufactured at that plant, i.e. Accord, Civic, Odyssey, MDX, Pilot, TL) I come up with upwards of 750,000 units sold. Even revising that number downward for all of the vehicles sold with manual transmissions, you'd have to take into account that the resultant number represents only those units sold during the first 8 months of the year! With a full 4 months of sales ahead, I think it's safe to say that the 930,000 transmissions per year figure does not make for a lot of transmissions with no homes.

Also keep in mind that Honda now supplies Saturn with a variant of the J35 and its 5-speed automatic transmission, so that adds to the figure as well.

 

Using the sales record of 2004 ....does it state what year vehichles all of those minvans/suv's/tl's/rl's/pilot's..........ect are ...the total sales record for 2004 thus far , could that not include ANY year make and model....and lets not forget the 930,000 number is produced soley at the one plant ...what about the transmissions from the mother plant in Japan...and they have another plant that produces the tranmsissions as well.


So for the record ..the one plant I focused on in that article has been in OPERATION since 1996 ! 9 years ............Honda has been working with Antonov on the transmission patent for 9 YEARS...

http://216.239.41.104/search?q=cache...+Antonov&hl=en



Note the highlighted Honda article in that link.... So given the increase of sales over a 9 year period ..there are /were an abundance of transmissions on hand at any given time ...and again that is just one PLANT...

And you mention Honda is producing transmissions for the saturn .... undoubtedly ,they are producing tranmsissions for more then just the Saturn,which was their intended goal with THIS new transmission concept in mind that would allow for ....FAST cheap tranmsissions to be produced for ANY car ...any make ....with not one change needed in their equipment to be able to produce them .....

Now the math......600,000 transmissions produced thus far in a 8 month period ....at ONE plant ,4 months to go for another 300,000 ( Averaged ) again do you know if the sales record thus far is strictly NEW car sales or is that figure derived from used as well?



Honda can't manufacture 2500 CARS a day ..it is impossible .....So YES ,I'm sorry 2500 transmissions produced a day leaves Honda stockpiled with an enourmous amount of transmissions.

 

Honda Transmission Mfg. of America, Inc.
Russells Point, Ohio
Automatic Transmissions
July 1996
325,000 sq. ft.
1,000,000 units
960
$152 million
US Dollars

The plant opened in 1996 solely focused on the production of automatic transmissions, which requires high level of precision manufacturing technologies, for North American-built models. Previously, the Anna Engine Plant had produced automatic transmissions since 1989.



************************************************** *********************************


Ok so Honda bought patents from Antonov in 1995 ....... Opened this plant in 1996 to soley manufacture Automatic transmissions....................... The patent rights allowed Honda to BUILD from the original concept/ design that Antonov invented... remember 7 of them were purchased...these were patent rights to the original design of antonov's. NOT the entire transmission design..Honda MODIFIED the original design and incorporated their own features... However soemthing obviously went terribly wrong ... Perhaps the original design that Antonov invented NEEDED to be intact for the tranmission to work properly ... With Honda's engineers and only part's of the patent rights Honda could not manufacture an identical protocal of Antonovs invention and thus we have a transmission that does not work correctly...Machinary components all work in sinc ..if one part won't work smoothely with another it will fail.............

 

430,934


Tl's made to date

http://216.239.39.104/search?q=cache...+AMERICA&hl=en


This was posted at the link above ..1996 wasn't that the first year a TL was manufacutred or was it 1995 ?

 

Yes it does. It is broken down by vehicle model and shows figures for sales year to date, year to date for the previous year as well as sales for just this month and this same month last year. It also compares the daily selling rates between the current and previous year. This includes ONLY new car sales and includes ONLY vehicles sold in the United States. Yes there are other plants so the 930,000 transmissions number is surely higher, but keep in mind that they also sell these same vehicles in TONS of other places around the world!

There is always going to be a supply of transmissions, but Just In Time methodologies and the efficiencies and cost savings that they create are not simply going to be thrown away. They may very well have several days worth of transmissions sitting there somewhere, but it's very clear to me that you do not understand the numbers that we are dealing with here! How many cars do you think you have to build a day to satisfy demand based on the numbers I have posted before?

I don't claim to know if they sell these transmissions to other manufacturers, but I find it odd that there were myriad press releases when the Honda/Saturn deal consummated and nothing mentioning them selling transmissions to other manufacturers before this. It would be pretty hard to keep a secret like this... information travels fast! And also keep in mind that you can't just mate any transmission to any engine without some cost or redesign. The engine's back side would have to be reshaped in order to mate to the transmissions bellhousing. Either that or some sort of adapter plate would have to be made which would make the engine/transmission combo wider and cause potential packaging problems. Space in the engine bay is at a premium in today's cars.

Again, the sales figures are strictly for new cars sold in the United States. It does contain some non 2004 model year vehicles, however. It lists 4 CL's being sold and those have been out of production for a while now, but they were vehicles left in dealer inventory. In any case they had not been titled before and were still NEW cars, so they don't skew the numbers because they don't get counted until they are SOLD. Also, they have no way to track the sales of used cars since they can be sold through countless outlets. If you bought a 5 year old Civic from your neighbor, which of you reports that sale to Honda? Neither would. There's no way to do so in the first place. It's just not tracked because it's not possible.


Year to date (through end of August 2004) U.S. sales for Honda and Acura was 942,521 units. Let's say on the last day of August they decided to stop building cars for the rest of the year. Take 942,521 units and divide that by 366 days in the year. That is 2,575 cars per day if we take what they have sold in the first 8 months of the year and divide it by the full 12 months of the year! And we know they haven't stopped making cars... they're expanding to ramp UP production. According to Honda (http://www.hondanews.com/CatID1013?m...41116&mime=asc), worldwide automobile production for 2003 was 2,968,300 units. Divide that by the 365 days in 2003 and you get a staggering 8,132 units per day! Even using only vehicles manufactured in North America (U.S., Canada and Mexico) that figure is 1,259,100 units or 3,449 vehicles per day... still well above the 2500 units/day figure that you called impossible.

 

Theres 1300 acura dealerships in the USA ... We have had Acura technicians that have stated they are changing anywhere from 10-15 transmissions a week...... so take the low number 10 and times that by 52 weeks in the year you get 520 transmissions a year.

Now if there are 1300 dealerships and give the the benefit of doubt that say just 7 transmissions are being replaced a week...so say 364 transmissions a year per dealership ,so multiply 364 times 1300 the sum is ...473,200 .

If 430,934 Tl's have been produced since their inception we will include folks who have had 2-3-4-5 trannys replaced .....

So leats say that there are 7 being changed a week multiplied by 1300 dealerships thats 9100 transmissions per week changed ...say that this has been going on for 4 years ,so mulitply that by by 52 weeks and you get 175,000 transmissions that have been replaced.... Lets calculate the a % of transmission failures now .............


41% is 176,668 transmissions !



So now .... if one wants to get an accurate representation of failures for the transmissions I have calculated this in a fair manner ,giving benefitof only 7 transmissions a weak for each of the 1300 dealerships , Yes some may do more or less then that from what we've seen from the acura technicians posts ... However we do realise as well in the full scope that if one acura dealership is doing that many a week ,so are the others...

Yes this is a fair fair and real calculation....


41% Failure rate for the Acura Transmissions.

 

You cannot be serious! You are taking a number that "some techs" apparently gave you.. which represents one fixed amount of time... and then randomly picking a number in the middle of that range... then multiplying it by EVERY DEALER. Do you see how with every assumption and with every time you perform multiplication that you get FURTHER AND FURTHER away from reality?

Do you honestly believe that the transmission failure rate is 41%? Do you honestly have ANY faith in the TREMENDOUS number of assumptions you have made based on a SEVERELY limited sample of data? How many techs from how many of those 1300 dealerships did you get data from? (I'll give you a big hint: There are not 1300 Acura dealers) Your numbers are wrong before you even start the math.

This is amazing!

 

I think if that is an accurate figure and we can prove that 41% of 2nd generation trannys fail, that would be heavy ammo to use legally against Acura to get a real recall and get our cars fixed.
Again, 2-3 % is pure bullshit...This is an illegal cover up.
This war can be won with acura data, legal help and most importantly media exposure...

 

I just saw your post on the figures after I posted the calculated failure rate onn the transmissions.


You forgot to take into acount the manual transmissions in your figure's .... and the plant inn Russells Ohio that I am speaking of deals strictly with the automatic tranmsission..that is 2500 transmission daily and I did see a new number of 940,000 AUTOMATIC tranmssions a year are being produced at THAT plant alone ..... and yes that is not the ONLY plant that produces the Automatic transmissions.


Still the failure rate is what it is and the design defect can be expalined as I presented in another thread here at this forum .


And you mentioned that these transmission could not be installed into the cars without modifications? That contradicts it's whole concept .. read the link

http://216.239.39.104/search?q=cache...+antonov&hl=en



The compactness of this transmission would make it possible to fit into any of their makes or models ...

 

Do you honestly believe that the transmission failure rate is 41%? Do you honestly have ANY faith in the TREMENDOUS number of assumptions you have made based on a SEVERELY limited sample of data? How many techs from how many of those 1300 dealerships did you get data from? (I'll give you a big hint: There are not 1300 Acura dealers) Your numbers are wrong before you even start the math.

This is amazing!

************************************************** ********************************


Do you know hoe many counties are in each state? Most countie's have atleast ONE Acura dealership ! There are atleast that many Acura dealerships in the USA if not more... My numbers are not off~!


If you are in the KNOW of the transmission failure rates then you tell us???? What are you to have us beleive it is 2 or 3 % ..The first thought was 1 or 2% then they uped to to 2 or 3% . We know this is NOT true ..why doesn't aAcura tell us once and for all what the TRUE % is of failure's and

"WHY "


Would you have us believe they REALLY don't know after 4 years!


With all their engineers on board ? That meet weekly and go over this ?


For 4 years ?


Come on who is fooling WHO here?

 

This is correct... they do not break out by transmissions. However, look at the figures. If even half are autos, it's still way above what you said was impossible. Even if LESS than half are autos. I really don't think you understand quote how big of an operation selling cars globally is. I do understand that is not the only automatic transmission plant but we are only ONE COUNTRY in which Honda sells cars! The sales figures for JUST THIS ONE COUNTRY eat up a significant portion of those transmissions!

The failure rate IS what it is. And the truth is neither you or I know exactly what that rate is. It surely has NOTHING to do with the post you made previously where you calculated a 41% failure rate based on half a million assumptions based on what you heard from 2 or 3 sources. It's just not solid logic. Personally, I suspect the failure rate IS in fact higher than what Honda is claiming, but neither of us have the data to prove it!

Without even reading the link, let me explain something to you. Engines are all different external shapes. You cannot plop a any transmission made by any manufacturer onto any engine made by any other manufacturer just because there is physical space in the engine bay. The input shaft of the transmission must engage the torque converter or clutch, the mounting holes of the transmission housing must mate up to the engine and the axles/intermediate shaft and/or driveshaft must line up. These are the modifications I am talking about!

You can't even buy bags for your vacuum without making sure you know the type it takes.. not even those are one-size-fits-all! And surely engines are transmissions are a million times more complex... the same rules apply!

 

Yes you know your right and thats probably just ONE of the reasons these transmissions are failing ..Honda has stated that they make changes ,sometimes on a daily basis to the makings of the tranmissions............. No doubt they have probably tried to modify and fit these same transmissions into cars that it just wasn't going to work ..Something about their transmissions was not meant to be and I am trying to figure out exactly where all this went wrong ...... Because without doubt the design went wrong~!


If they came clean with the truth ,noone would have to speculate...But we know the truth will not come out because of liabilty purposes ,so that leaves us to speculate...

 

Honda and acura make changes all the time in the engine structure ......this designed transmission was to be able to be used in all their makes and models ..and if NOT What was the darn hurry to move all their manufacturing equipment to that Russells plant in 1996 ..shortly after having bought the 7 patent rights to Antonovs transmission design if they had no plans to put it into full force!

 

The link clearly states that Honda was working with Antonov for 9 years ...9 years thats quite along time ...NO?

 

No, and I don't need to.

Not true.

When you buy an Acura you get a handy little booklet that gives you the names and addresses of all Acura dealers in the country. Since you have a 41% chance of your transmission failing (I am being sarcastic here) it's a good thing to have when you're travelling. Let me count up the dealers here.... looks like 260. And that includes one in Puerto Rico. Did you get that? 260!! Your previous figure of 1300 was only off by, ohh, exactly 5 times. Do you see how making assumptions can be so dangerous? Plug that 260 number into your original (and highly flawed) math and you will see that the result will be MANY MANY times less than your previous figure and it will STILL be wrong because of all of the other assumptions you have made When you start out with bad data and perform math on bad data you come out with SERIOUSLY bad data.


Do not put words into my mouth. I never claimed to know the real numbers. In fact, quite the opposite. The entire point of my series of posts is to show that NONE OF US.. you.. me.. anyone on this board... knows the real numbers. We can all have opinions. I have stated previously that I suspect it is higher than the rates they are reporting, but I don't know that for sure. Just like you don't know for sure. With that in mind, do not try to tell people that you DO know for sure. Because you don't. None of us do. NONE.

Again, we don't know what they do and don't know. And by we I mean all of us. Everyone. Myself included and, I am sorry to say, but you included as well. We simply do not know. Saying that we do know is NOT TRUE.

I can tell you who ISN'T fooling who. You're not fooling me.

 

You are restating the obvious. We all know something is wrong with the transmissions.. they would not be failing otherwise. When I say transmissions not "fitting" I don't mean they are mismatched as in the transmissions are not matched to handle the power that the engines produced, I mean mismatched as in trying to put a square peg in a round hole. Go try to put your refrigerator inside your microwave to get a better idea of what I mean.

Quite right! If we knew for sure we would not have to speculate. I am glad you know that is what we are all doing -- speculating. Not speaking factually. Which is why the same thinking that led you to come up with a 41% failure rate is so dangerous. You just said it's speculation, but a couple of posts back you were defending the methods you used to arrive at that figure. It's all speculation. That is PRECISELY my point!

 

I have not stated I KNOW anything for sure,so please don't put words in my mouth ,I stated I am speculating and if we knew the truth ,there would be no need to speculate..


I am trying to come up with a figure from the little data we do have!!!


So what "is" an acceptable fail rate ADAM ? if it is 10% !!! What is the EXCUSE buddt that it goes on for 4 years!

 

Again I am sorry if I was not more clear. I am very familiar with Honda engines. I have removed them, rebuilt them, reassembled them and reinstalled them. Hell in my Civic I have an engine from an Acura Integra. And guess what? The Civic transmission will NOT bolt up to the Integra engine... they are different shapes and sizes. The mount holes do NOT line up. You also need the Integra axles and intermediate shaft to make this work. The transmissions that bolt up to the J series blocks (the V6 engine family that is found in the Accord, Odyssey, Pilot, MDX, CL, TL) will NOT bolt up to other Honda engines. It is simply not a one-size-fits-all thing!

That plant buils several different types of transmissions... just because they are all destined for Honda vehicles does NOT mean they interchange with each other. I know for a 100% fact.. based on personal experience... not speculation.. that this is true.

 

You most certainly have. You said there was no way (IMPOSSIBLE was your word) that Honda manufactures 2500 cars a day. I gave you facts to the contrary. You said that you calculated a 41% failure rate and that it was a FAIR FAIR AND REAL CALCULATION. Do you still feel that way knowing that your number of dealerships was WAY off? How can a FAIR FAIR AND REAL calculation be based on speculation, as you now say?

Therein lies the problem. You can't do that and be accurate!

I don't know what their "acceptable" failure rate is. Nor do I claim to know. I can surmise, however, that if they are telling us that the failure rate is 1 or 2% (whether that is true or not) it must be higher than what they consider acceptable or else why would they voluntarily recall the cars? They could have just as easily said that 1 or 2% is within their "acceptable" failure range and just ignored it all.

I agree that this has been going on for a long time and that they very well could have handled it better and a lot faster, but the same point remains. The very point that I have been trying to make for quite some time: WE DO NOT KNOW. With that in mind, it's not a good idea to post numbers that you claim are factual.

 

The data that I pulled for the plant states that they exclusivley manufacture the the Automatic tranmssion there...


I don't assume the actual tranmission is a one size fits all ...My meaning in this is that the transmission patent was originally designed so that it it compact and very easy to manufacture in their plant with no modification to their exsisting equipment ,therefore their scurry to get that equipment to another plant to design the transmissions was done for a reason ,or they would NOT have bothered moving all that equipment ,especially at Christmas time ..The thing is ..again all specualtion is that they were going to do ALOT of redesiging of the engine structure ,so that these tranmssions would FIT any of thier make and models ... Wether they did that to all of the makes and models I have no clue ...but the patent rights that were purchased ,7 of them ..were not ALL the patent rights if you look up Antonov's patents ,you will see he has MANY! He was not stupid enough to sell HONDA all right s...no ..honda only has rights to those 7 ..but with honda engineers and the certain deisgn that Honda was only intetrested in ..leads me to SPECULATE that they had a PLAN..and the plan was to make /modify rebuilf off the patent rights they did have and make transmissions to fit THIER cars ,because they were so cheap to make..


anyway I should be getting ready to evacuate Florida ,but the two of us seem to keep pulling each other back in to this ..... Yes for the record it's all specualtion ..the same thing thats been going on here in this forum for 4 years about the transmission issue ...


So you being in south florida ..are you not going to leave because of IVAN?????

 

No... based on the data I've seen my area is not going to take a direct hit, or I might be thinking otherwise. Obviously these are unpredictable, but I live 25 miles or so inland and am in a newer, well-built house and have shutters and all that good stuff, so I think we'll be fine. Obviously if we were ordered to evacuate I would do it, but I don't see that happening.

 

Yes you mention I said 2500 cars were not manufactured a day that it is impossible ..... You have said that in excess of 8000 Honda manufactured autombiles are produced a day ..


ADam ...is that true ...re-check your figure's.............. Because if thats true ,then OMG..they don't have ENOUGH transmissions to go into them ...HA~ no wonder there is a wait sometimes for tranmssions when they are brought in to be replaced on a regular bais ,due to failure...Well sometimes they can get them like overnight ,however if they are manufacturing 8000 cars daily and only making 2500 tranmissions daily ..well that looks like a serious problem ...


Maybe they can throw together a cost effectuive plant real quick and up those numbers of trannys so that they have enough for the high rate of automobile production!


I'm glad I don't have THAT kind of headache~ The only headaches I have stem from my cervical damage sustained due to the FAILURE of those tranny's ..



Yes ,I guess I should consider myself lucky.


Anyway ... I don't care if I'm wrong in alot of points I speculate on ... I'm wrong about alot of things alot of times ..I was wrong in bieng gullable and believing Acura really put a NSX tranny in my 04 TL... Amazing huh? I truly believed that ...


So for the record I will state if my figure's I stated early are way off ,so be it ..if I said they were TRUE factual numbers..... I wrongly assumed that one could see that I was speculating .... I mean I gave all calcualtions as to how I came up with those numbers' ...I certainly thought it was obvious speculation ..but Adam you want me to say to you that I was wrong ,wrong ,wrong ...


So ,that is not a problem for me ..... however the only thing I was wrong in ...to clarify is that my numbers are speculation ,,,,I assumed it was obvious~

 

The hurrican is teetering on 5 scale hurricane ,the hurricane force winds are to be felt in a 60 mile radius ( you live 25 miles inland) The path of Ivan is undetermined because not knowing what the high pressure from the east and the low pressure from the south are going to do ..well again it's speculation on the forecasters part,however we have had 2 hurricane's thus far this month and one shortly before those..

My house was built late 2001 ,all block 5/8 plywood on roof and built to code for florida hurricane standards . Block homes were crumbled in Greneda .... hurricane code in fla is 100 mph winds.. I don't think mine could withstand a catergory 4 hurricane and gosh i'd hate to not make it put in time if I did decide to leave at last minute.


Frances has done alot of damage ,I lost 2 big trees in my yard. My brother-in-law's restaraunt KC Crumps on the Homosassa ,which was an Historical landmark ;burnt to the ground thursday night ,due to effects from hurricane frances,I amnot taking any chances ..best wishe's to you and your family.

 

I don't need to recheck the figures -- I didn't "come up" with them. I merely took the figure posted on Honda's news site (http://www.hondanews.com/CatID1013?m...41116&mime=asc) and divided it by the number of days in the year. No funny math here. They obviously have plenty of transmissions to go with them or else how would they sell them? And surely a vehicle without a transmission installed would not be considered fully built. You said yourself that this is not the only transmission plant.. plus you have to add in for the manual transmissions.


They obviously already have one because you can't sell a car without a transmission!

Sorry to hear that you were injured! I hope you recover quickly! Have you pursued any legal action?

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It was obvious to me that the numbers were false... but when you say that they are accurate and fair and real then people get the wrong idea.