NicksTLS

What is going on! 8 months, and my tranny goes out! It all happened within 1 hour. It started to slip after 2nd gear, so I turned around and made my way to the dealer. In 30 mins, the car was undrivable!! It had to be towed to the dealer, and now I have found out that they are ordering a complete new tranny. This is unacceptable. And now I find tons of postings regarding this!!! I'm not alone it seems!

PLEASE, can anyone forward me any information they have on the history of this problem!! I'm covered with warrenty, but that's not enough for me. A 30,000+ car should never have this kind of stuff happen to it so soon, if ever!

Any REPEAT problems reported???

Thanks guys... Really appreciate any help!

thephantom

Sorry to hear that. Some members have gone through 3 trannies already. Post your VIN because I know Oblio is gathering data.

Scrib

Is Oblio gathering CL data as well???

Just curious...

thephantom

Won't hurt, post them.

RedLined

Welcome to the club Nick. I'm on my 3rd tranny (the 1st out at 8500 miles, the 2nd at 26000 miles). I now have close to 39000 with no indication of transmission degradation.

Sounds like your failure was pretty much the same as everyone else's. My guess is there was probably a little slippage occuring for a few weeks but since you weren't expecting tranny trouble you probably weren't looking for it. When my second tranny went out, I knew it was going for at least a month. It started slipping a little between 2nd and 3rd. Then one day it started making a horrible grinding noise, then all the warning lights came on and I took it in. When the first tranny went, I never really thought much of when my tranny would hold a gear a little too long. It was a new car and I thought maybe it was just a characteristic of the tranny.

Anyway, look for oblio98's post regarding all the tranny failures and VINs. It maybe a couple of days back, but you should be able to find it.

Scrib

Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a specific post over at ACL.com that is keeping track of VIN numbers.

There is an entire forums dedicated to tranny issues, however...

http://www.acura-cl.com/forums/forum...s=&forumid=126


My CL-S has 3000 miles on it, so far so good...

garylee55

Scrib,

In the CL board there is one post in the Tranny section asking you to slect the mileage range at which your tranny went. 49 people had voted so far last time I looked...

Scrib

Mileage yes, but I haven't seen many, if any VINs posted.

NicksTLS

The response to my post has been great! You guys have given me too much GREAT information! Thanks!

It is so bittersweet to go through this... my car is so new, and it seems this is happening too often around the country. I have put in many calls to Acura today, and have made it clear that I am not one to screw with. Having all this data (thanks to this great site) ...I am prepared.

I can't believe some people are on their 3rd tranny. Now my car is tainted, I will always look for something in the tranny to go wrong. Something I would never expect from Honda/Acura.

Did anyone hear of a new tranny being put in... rather than a re-manufactured one??

baggsTLS

Some of the posts indicate dealerships are instructed by ACURA to put in NEW trannys Only. They are not allowed to do any of the work except remove and replace.

Good luck fighting Acura. Many ppl have shared their stories. They too were not ones to mess with, but in the end Acura/Honda is the big corporation and ulitmately it is their decision to create a recall. Which we know will never happen because the % of failure is too small.

I'm sorry to hear about your tranny. I had an emission problem, requiring new bypass valves at 100 miles. I'm praying that I don't acquire the dreaded dying tranny, but only time will tell.

Good Luck!

Mr. Bo Jangles

I talked to the Acura Salesman today and he said the problem was fixed for 2003. He said the problem with the tranny was the clutch pads.

Anyone hear of this?

1SICKLEX

I think everyone replaces reconstructed trannies, I have not heard of new trannies before.

AC

I have to agree with you. I heard even "new" wheels from Acura/any manuf. are actually refurbished and sold to us all as new. Ain't that some bull sh!t.

1SICKLEX

What's some bullsh!t is trannies going out on a new car, let alone a 30k "luxury car". This is getting to be a joke.

But hey, if people still buy, I would not fix it either.

Dr.Bear

Sorry to hear about your misfortune Nick. My tranny was replaced at 5300 miles. Same situation with slippage after 2nd gear. The replaced tranny is running smoothly now at 14,500 miles. I hope it keeps up.

BTW, you'll most likely get a remanufactured tranny. This means they'll take your tranny off of your car (you'll never see it again) and then give you a tranny that has new internal parts and some other unlucky person's tranny case. It'll be a cold hell before they'll build a new tranny just for you. They would rather put new trannies in new cars. But don't fret, the remanufactured tranny runs fine (so far).

I hope this helps...

pianoman41

That's a load of bull. 03TYPES had his tranny go out already and as you can guess by his nickname, it's an '03.

oblio98

Hey Dr. Bear,

Welcome back. Long time, no hear.
Would you mind giving us your VIN for our dead tranny post
http://www.acura-tl.com/forum/showth...threadid=30872

The more info we pile up now, the more info members will have if this probelm really gets bad.

THANKS

:-jon

hchhon

What hell is wrong with Acura's quality? Would you buy a 30K car if have known it has a history of tranny failures? Last week I went to Acura of Boston and asked one of the guys and he said one of the customers had a tranny failure right after when he pickup his brand new TL and drove off the dealer parking lot. If I had known this before I wound not buy this car. Those lazy workers in Ohio plant whose build this car need to wake up. I thought the TL is made in Japan. Honda knows that the TL has a problem with the tranmission but not to issue a recall rather they wait for the transmission to fail and replace it. I am calling my lawyer and suing Honda!

baggsTLS

Exactly, when I used the term NEW I meant refurbished. Just pointing out that they will not try to fix yours at the dealer. They will just replace.

hchhon: I was a memeber of this site and well aware of the tranny issues BEFORE I bought my 2003 TLS. Maybe I'm foolish, but I figured it's worth the risk and if it goes, it goes. It just better go while it's still under warranty.

Monte TLS,MAX

Not the case I have seen post where 03's are having tranny issues as well.

JPritch

The key word in your quote is that you talked to a SALESMAN...and as we all know, they'll say whatever it is you want to hear!

RedLined

When my first tranny was replaced, the dealer told me it was replaced with a new one, not a remanufactured one. Whether that's true or not, I don't know. The 2nd one was replaced with remanufactured one.

MikeP02tls

I think you can just about add me to the list.

My 02 tl-s has just started not switching from 1st to 2nd and also shifts very rough. I checked the trans fluid and the level is fine. Problem has been going on for about 2 weeks intermittantly. My odo reads 11,000. This sucks!

Mike

oblio98

Keep us posted, and get it checked out.

:-jon

NicksTLS

Well. I get my car back today! I will keep you all posted on what happens.
Those of you out there experiencing the problems... get it checked out!

My buddy's CL-S just started doing it too. He had a flush, but it didn't help.

The funniest thing? I just took my TL-S in for the 15,000 service two days before the tranny went dead! Can you believe that???!!!

I have requested documents from Honda regarding HOW they have improved the trannies. This is the only way I can accept this whole mess. If it happens again, that will be the end. I'll be visiting the infiniti dealer asap~

LeftCorner

iTrader: (1)

That's totally false. Any wheel that is taken off for warranty purposes (or at the request of a customer) is scrapped, which means after 1 month the actual dealer throws it out. Rims (along with many other items) are never sent back to Honda for any reason. Occasionally if a rim is merely scratched or whatever a dealer is allowed to keep it as a "take-off" and sell it as an alternative to a "new" wheel, but is never passed off as new because it obviously has a visible flaw in it.

T Ho

The engine is assembled in the US, and the tranny is assembled in Japan. So, it looks to me like it might be "lazy workers" in Japan that have the problem.

Nice try, though. Get the facts next time.

Todd

MikeP02tls

Well here is the update. I took it to the dealer to have it checked. My service rep gave the patented suprised, never heard of that happening before, response. So they checked it out and could find nothing, I guess I am trying to get it repaired too early.

While I was waiting to get my car back, one of the other reps came by to tell me it would not be much longer and that nothing wrong was found. When I pressed him about this being a nationwide issue he told me off the record that his dealership has already replaced two tl-s trannys.

Acura sent a remanufactured tranny with new guts suposedly with higher tolerence specs. He intimated that if I had more problems, I should bring it back, before it fails, and they may just replace the tranny based upon my caomplaints.

Ill keep you guys posted.

Mike :yack:

NicksTLS

Well, I picked up my car with the new tranny installed. So far so good. It feels like new again. It even feels faster! I was so happy to get it back, that little Integra just wasn't cuting it.

I expressed my concern to all who would listen at Acura. I got a call back from some one at corporate today. They did their usual "we care" routine. I asked him to put his money where his mouth was. "Show" me you care and will make up for this terrible inconvienence.

I was first offered a "double" warranty. Being that I had already purchased that at the day of purchase, he then offered to take care of all future service and maintainence cost. I said, "Done Deal!"

That restored my faith (just a little) to walk away happy. Just thought I'd give you all an update. Thanks again for all your info guys. Good luck to anyone out there having this problem!

oblio98

Those buggers must really be getting tranny weary. They would hardly do anything for me. It will be interesting to hear what they do from here on..

Congrats a Good Luck. My "new" tranny has over 10K on it, and it is working fine!

:-jon

Robbdogg

It appears that I amy be joining the piss poor club of dead transmissions myself.
In the last week, I have noticed lots of slips, and the past 2 days it has gotten worse. This morning it was slipping and hitting 6K before catching again. Sounds like my baby is going to die.

DHB

It sounds like they gave you some pretty awesome customer service NicksTLS. No one could say that Acura Corporate isn't trying to do right by you. I sure hope they will treat everyone who has a tranny failure that well from this point forward.

Ruski

Loaners...

my friend took his 98 Q45 in for service and got a NEW I35 to drive for a day

why does Acura give Integras or rentals?

Pawel

Ok, as a happy owner of 2000 TL with 39,986 miles on it, and flowlesly working tranny, I have this one thing to say to all of my TL, TL S brothers and sisters.... LEMON LAW! WFT, if that was my car, third time myself and my attorney would be going to dealer... guys, I'm for real. Look into it... if you can document that same problem was being attemted to be fixed at least 3 times, and it's still there, you got a lemon car. Just my $.02

scalbert

BTW, don't blame the Ohio workers, the transmission is assembled in Japan and shipped to the states as a whole unit.

MikeP02tls

I am already building my claim. The dealer however is doing a good job so far and they are replacing my tranny on the second service call. We'll see.

garylee55

You can negotiate a better buy-back deal directly with the dealer than you can with the Lemon Law...not to mention eliminate all the hassle!

Xorg

These tranny problems aren't all the surprising, just reflect poor engineering on the part of many car manufacturers - not just Acura. (Volvo had serious issues with trannies lately as well.)

Manufacturers are currently in a horsepower race, every foreign make now seems to offer 200/225/250+hp engines as standard items on their mid-range cars, but guess what - while they've beefed up the engines, the trend in trannies is just the opposite - they're all now much smaller than the used to be, and likely less able to handle the increased horsepower demands of today's cars.

On the flip side, and as people have pointed out here, because they're smaller, they much easier and far less expensive to replace. So its now almost unheard of for any shop or dealer to service a transmission, they just swap them out with remanufactured ones, and off you go.

Dr.Bear

When my tranny gave out, S. FL Acura pulled a silver type-s off the lot for me to drive. I had the car for about 2 weeks. The funny thing was that I rear ended a f-150 2 days after receiving the loaner tl-s. My friends gave me an estimate on the repairs that totalled over $1,200. I was starting to freak out. The next day I brought the car in to the service rep. He looked at the damage (pretty bad, cracked bumper and spider webbed paint) and said, "hummm, give me $150 and I'll take care of it). So that was pretty cool of them.

Also, I contacted Honda/Acura of America immediately after my tranny failed. A case rep was assigned to me to take care of my needs. I think his name was Bob. I gave my complaints to Bob and he acted as the middleman for Acura of S.FL and me. At first, the dealer said it would take up to 2 months for my new tranny. I called Bob and said that was unacceptable. I guess Bob called the dealer and was able to hasten the tranny order down to 2 weeks. He also said he would give me a free 15,000 mile tune up. (I really don't care to have my car serviced at the dealership. They always find a way to scratch and ding up the interior of my car). So my advice to anyone who starts to have a tranny failure, call the 800 number for Honda of America (can be found on the sticker placed in the lemon law booklet) and have someone from the company represent you.

garylee55

Did that Bear...they were no help whatsoever! They opened a 'Case' for me and assigned to someone who promptly went on vacation for 2 weeks. Talked to SE Acura Rep who could not have cared less...that's when I said I was done with Acura.