Recently my TL-S had failed on me while driving to a picnic 40 miles away from home. Was 10 minutes away from my destination and out of nowhere my check engine, vsa, tcs, and traction light turned on. As I was driving I noticed something about the shifting in the transmission. Decided to keep driving to my destinstion. Made it there with a bad stench of trans fluid burning. Wasn't a pleasant smell at all. Checked under the car and saw black fluid coming out of the transmission. Went to a near by auto parts store and had the check engine codes printed out. Bad news, the trans was toast. So recently I had taken it to a local carmax and sold it to them for a low amount because I had no other choice since no one wanted to buy it as is. It was a fun run while it lasted. Not buying anymore Acuras unless its an NSX after seeing bad experiences with mine and a few friends Acuras. Decided to go the Lexus route and sticking with it. If anyone is looking for a 6mt speedometer for swap I will be posting it in the black market.

 

let this be a lesson to all- any trans smells are BAD NEWS Stop Driving!
from the sounds of it- this car suffered a seal failure- probably where the axle goes in
and let enough fluid out to roast the remainder!

how long had it been since last atf change? ever? what did CarMax give you?
nice choice on the Lex!! find their forum-register as owner etc for recalls blah blah and a new group of online freinds

 

No, lesson to all is when the gauges light up like a x-mas tree stop Immediately. Dont keep driving.

 

oh yeah- that part about all the warning lights came on...D'oh! STOP THE CAR!!!!!!!!
Im sticking with my old excuse- not wearing glasses

 

There must have been a leak going on for a while, seals don't just give up that quick they give signs . Periodic maintenance was the failure here.

ATF got low not letting the transmission do its job. One system shuts down the other, reason why all the lights.

 

ErickUa5, can you elaborate a bit more as to why all the warning indicator lights same on at once?

 

I will bet my money that his ATF Foamed up (Been there, done that).
I wonder if he was driving with DW-1 at all? If he wasn't I´m pretty sure his ATF foamed up as it exactly what happened with my AMSOIL Change that eventually toasted my trans (Yeah it was that fast) Foamed up ATF = Hardcore ATF Leak.


Only reason you will smell Hardcore ATF is because is dripping out of the trans somehow if you haven't done a drain/fill recently = Stop the fuck driving ASAP and Check for Leaks!. If you did a drain/fill recently 10x the reason to STOP right away.


This IMHO could have been prevented the minute you started to smell ATF.

 

Because there was a failure. If it lost fluid, started to overheat, clogged solenoids and lost pressure it failed. While it may have been somewhat slow to happen internally, as it happens its not enough to trigger a warning light. Once it gets bad enough to do the above its usually a very fast fail causing the dash to light up like a x-mas tree.

 

I checked the carfax before buying the car back in 2012 and just had maintenance done all it's life at the dealer. So when buying it I was like oh it was just well taken care of without issues. Then when I went to carmax I saw the specific list of maintenance and the transmission had been looked into and worked on 4 times which means that the owner knew it was gonna go bad and wanted to get her money's worth at the time while she could. All I can say is that carmax is just a last resort option (cheap offers). Which happened because no one was interested in the car even before this issue. I bought the TL-S with 123,300 and sold it with 150,300. Didn't do a lot of driving really.