So, my '99 was showing some signs of the tranny going out. Unfortunately, I'm pretty far past the warranty stage. Had a clicking noise when I started from a stop, TCS and check engine lights have been on for a while now, and it was slipping pretty bad. Took it into my mechanic who does it on the side from his home and the clicking noise he thought was coming from the transaxle. He had a friend who was a lead tech at a transmission specialist shop and told me to take it to him to see what was up with it.

A day later he called and said the transmission was slipping bad, and that 3 of the 4 clutch disks were burned out, so basically the tranny could just blow out at any time. We decided to go ahead and have them rebuild it ($2500 + parts, came out to around $2700).

A week and a half later, car is back, and drives beautifully. I'm glad I didn't take the route that my dad suggested, which was sell the car and buy something cheaper (since I still owe money on this one), or rebuild the tranny and continue to be poor for a while. I decided to be poor. Love the car too much to get rid of it.

But now I have a problem. The check engine and TCS lights are still on, and the guy who did my tranny thought I may just need to have the ECU flashed and they would go away. How much is this going to cost? Will that really do it, or do I possibly have another problem? He never mentioned if it was throwing a code/what the code was (which I wish he or my mechanic had told me what it was...) so I could investigate it further, and I don't know anyone with an OBD2 reader.

Any suggestions would be wonderful!

 

Well, now I have an even bigger problem...

I was driving to my parents house (which is 5 minutes from my place), turned a corner and the D4 light started flashing and it felt like I was stuck in 4th gear or something. My friend who had taken her drunk friend home last night from a party in my car said it started doing the same thing to her (don't know about the D4) so she was close to my apartment and dropped it off to pick up her car. I was hoping that was just something that was going to be avoidable in the future, but I guess not.

So, should I be ok driving the car like 20 minutes to the shop to drop it off tomorrow to have them continue (ugh) to look at it? What have they missed when rebuilding it? I was tempted to call an Acura dealership to see if a service tech there knows a little more, but I don't want them to have me bring in my car and want to charge me for something after I just dropped nearly 3 grand at another shop.

Thanks again for any help... This is frustrating..

 

if your transmission light is flashing there is definitely something wrong ... i hope the guy you got work done gave you some sort of warranty, because you should take it back and show him that the D4 light is flashing

 

well the lights being on would have been my first clue something wasnt done right. The guy that rebuilt it should have scanned the codes to see what they were. Id get it back to the shop that rebuilt it (hopefully they gave you some type of warranty) and have them repair it properly

 

I have a 3 year/36,000 mile warranty so I'm fine there, I'm just kinda also wondering what they will have to do so this problem doesn't happen again

 

It all depends on whats wrong. We dont know that without a code so we cant help you. Nor do we really know what they replaced in the rebuild. It could be anything so im not even going to start guessing, and thats all we would be doing. It may be something as simple as a sensor not connected to as severe as they dont know what they are doing rebuilding and messed it up

 

Gotcha, that makes sense. Thanks, guess I'll just have to see on Monday when I get it towed back there, I don't know if I want to take the chance of driving it back.

 

I would have it towed because you never know if they want to be jerks and say "Well you drove it here and made it worse, warranty void"

 

Well, I assume my dad called the shop about a tow truck (he was going to get it up there for me so I could get to work), but I looked outside my apartment this morning and my car was gone, so I assumed a tow truck got it. He called me about 10 minutes later saying that he was driving it and it was driving fine (why the fuck did you have to drive it...), so I hope they are able to recreate the problem/find out whats wrong. The guy who did the work said everything internally was fine on the tranny it was probably just something electrical (duh).

So, I hope I hear good news within the next day, getting tired of only having a car every other day and that car being my mom's Hyundai heh