Okay, first off, I searched the 2nd Gen board for this problem and didn't seem to be able to find anything like this, so here goes...

Car is 2003 TL Type S Automatic, bought second hand (grrr) about 10,000 km ago.

Last night I was coming home from a game with my kids in the car (think equiv to 2 adults and 2 kids in load factor) when I found that my fifth gear had no power to it. Here's what happened. Exiting off one highway to another, I accelerated pretty hard as I merged on and took it to about 120km/h. As I cruised along immediately after, I found that I was losing speed and that applying the gas had little effect on the power to the wheels. I dropped it to D4 and was fine, though RPMs were higher than D5 (natch). When backing out of the garage this morning, I found there was little oomph again. Again, today, fifth gear gives virtually no power and reverse is same. Tranny fluid is nowhere near orange... if my oil was that colour I would change it (yeah yeah, I know should have changed sooner, but about a month ago the dealer checked and said it was slightly brown and should be good for a little while longer...)

So, my question to you wise and sage members of this board is: should I hit the panic button and re-mortgage the home or is this something that could actually be benign and simple to fix?

From what I have read the tranny failures are typically to the 2nd and 3rd gears and involves jerky movement and/or slipping between gears. This is really a failure to give power while in gear. It doesn't slip out. Would a simple fluid flush fix this?

Oh, and BTW, my next Acura (yes there will be a next) will be a MANUAL TRANSMISSION. Drove MT Hondas for 18 years and never had any problems. Looking forward to more of same in due time

 

is your check engine light on?

 

Nope, check engine light is not on. Oh, and yes, I was advised that the tranny mod was done on the car (apparently).

Fortunately I now have an appt to bring the car in on Monday to the dealership.

 

Update:

Well, I am a happy man today! The short story is that the tranny is being replaced and Acura is picking up the tab.

The longer tale is that I took the car in for it's appointment with destiny this morning and nothing was acting up on the way. So, I was part feeling good that maybe it had corrected itself and part concerned that we would not be able to troubleshoot the problem. As it turned out, it manifested itself in a big way. The tech pushed the RPMs pretty good on the freeway and got it to start failing. It seems that once it gets hot it fails. In fact he made it fail so well that we could not go forward, only reverse. By that point we were on the overpass trying to turn around and go back to the dealership. We ended up going in reverse to the nearest residential turnoff (about a block or so) to get off the main road.

The car was towed into the dealership and they re-checked the numbers. It turned out that the tranny IS covered by the extended warranty. New tranny is on order and should be in place by later this week!

On an extremely positive note, I was treated exceptionally well by the dealership. From the tech guy who patiently answered all my questions to the service lady who offered a loaner car for me at their expense, even before we found out that the tranny was being covered by Acura, I felt that they were doing their best to look after me. So here's my shameless plug for the dealership: If you are in the Edmonton area, I would highly recommend Southview Acura for taking your Acura (or Honda) for service.

They called in the parts and confirmed the order before the 1:00pm cutoff to get next day service from the distribution warehouse. They figure I should have the car back by Wed/Thu of this week. Pretty good service eh?

What made this interesting (for me at least) is that virtually of the posts I had read about the tranny failure had to do with second and third gear. For me it was Fifth gear that started to fail first. The tech guy said the torque converter was totally locked up.