alright guys I'm not going to be selfish w/ this information, but to tell you the truth if you want to prolong the life of your tranny, please just get a tranny cooler, I just bought one and notice alittle difference but I feel alot more comfort with it. I had already replaced one tranny, and I'm not about to do another one, so I'm taking all precautionary steps to avoid a tranny breakdown. I think our tranny like honda accords one have the same problem and its the fact that heat destroys the clutches and gears, so cooling the temperature down will help. I did more than just adding the tranny cooler so you guys have to decide what is best for you. I'm alittle sick of hearing people having more problems with it. I'm about to add a stronger cooler eventhough the one I bought I thought was good, but when I touch the cooler it seems to be more hot than my engine radiator, which was weird, so good luck guys! Take care of your transmission, its a good car and will give you good results but it needs alot of caring, oh by the way I have a engine light on, and I did the scan thing anyone knows how to read the code, I'll post them up later.
-Henry

 

i read somewhere that the problem would not be corrected by a cooler because the problem was due by a faulty clutch pad or something. i dont remmber exactly.

 

it's nice to see new yorkers on this forum. I doubt tranny cooler will fix engineering problem. As far as I see it, we have design flow and on top of it even honda/acura have no clue how to fix this problem. On forum there are people with 3 replaced trannys.

 

The problem is due to a lack of transmission fluid entering the 3rd gear clutch pack. If you look at the Honda's NHSTA report it shows that Honda was able to reproduce the problem by doing repeated upshifts and downshifts into 3rd gear. There were numerous changes made to the transmission design including increasing the amount of transmission fluid entering the 3rd gear clutch pack. These fixes however do not fix the transmission problem 100%. The problem is less likely to occur, but it is still a problem.

Honda would need to do a lot more engineering, probably practically re-design the entire transmission to get it working right. In terms of economics this is not good business for Honda. Unfortunately in business even human life has a price, and if Honda has to pay a few law suits because their transmission is bad then it probably costs less than fixing every transmission on the market. The NHSTA doesn't seem to think this is a big enough problem to force Honda to fix it, so we're left with transmissions that will always be significantly less than bulletproof.

Do I think the transmission cooler will help? I don't think it will hurt, thats for sure. It will most likely increase the life of your transmission, but I have a lot of doubts of anyone making 300,000 miles with these transmissions even with a cooler.

If you'd like to read up a little on Honda's NHSTA report on the transmission problem check it out here: http://www.acura-cl.com/forums/showt...hreadid=104677

With the MDX recall on their transmissions it brings up the possibility that the CL/TLs might be next. Even though the MDX tranny is not the same as the CL/TL, they are similar. And '01 MDXs did exhibit similar burnt 3rd gear clutch pack problems according to Honda's NHSTA report.

 

there arent many trannies that will make it to 300k any way other than manuals

 

Installing a tranny cooler would be a double lost.

If the tranny is gonna fail, you want it to fail before the extended warranty expires. Then Acura will replace everything for free, and you'll get a rebuilt tranny with the latest revision remedy fix.

But if the tranny cooler does extend the life of the tranny (remember, a tranny cooler doesn't prevent the tranny from failing) till after the extended warranty expires, you'll have to pay for the tranny repair (thousands of $$) from your own pocket.

So, losing once by spending $$ on a tranny cooler. Then losing twice by spending $$ fixing the dead tranny (which would have been replaced earlier for free).

 

Flush the transmission every 30,000 miles and refill with Honda Z-1 fluid should help prolonging the longivity of the transmission. Volvo S70 uses the same manufacturer's transmission with a similiar design. Volvo board members and technicians have used this maintenance routine with sucesses. I agree that this transmission will not give you more 150,000 miles service regardless what you do with it.

 

What do you mean? Who makes the trannies? Honda, Volvo, or someone else?

 

Volvo s70 uses Transmissions made by GM........same as BMW as well.

 

Volvo S70 actually uses Asian Transmission, a Japanese company. Honda and Acura also use transmission made by Asian. Volvo S80 uses GM transmission. All these cars have transmision issues. I have a S70, a Honda Accord and a Acura TL-S. So far I have not have to replace any transmission yet. I do a complete transmission flush( about 12 quarts of Mobil 1) every 30,000 miles on my S70. I replace, not flush, my honda and my Acura every 10,000 miles,or every other oil change. My Acura already had two Solenoids and ECM replaced at 32,000 miles. Other than that, they all arre pretty good transportation.

 

Hey my second transmission failed soon after the 30,000 mile flush. Actually since it was a second transmission that replaced the original one that failed at 6K miles, it only had 30-6=24K miles on it. Somehow the flush didn't help.

 

fsstyms, my old 85 MB 300D made it way passed the 300k barrier, the current owner has it at 400k right now. hard to believe but that tanker is still running why cant cars be like they used to?

 

Thats when they built MB's like tanks ,now they are built like evey other car, and thats why they make the C class.

 

i changed my tranny fluid every 15K before the original went out at 51K. i'm on the second one now and will be changing the fluid again at about 65K just for the sake of doing it. hopefully, it will be ok but i don't think there is any way to stop it unless you don't drive hard nor touch the sportshift.