- 2003 TL-S Update of My Issue
I have tried to drive a little and listen to my car in order to figure out what is wrong. It tends to only have this "grinding" when it is around 30-40 mph, and is predominantly while on uphill drives, whether they are slight. Once accelerating I will be fine but if I lay off for a sec, then continue to press the gas, or have my foot on it slowly pushing it down farther, it begins to grind. It is a very quick (and bone chilling) "trrrrrrrr" sound that will continue until I let my foot off the gas. It sounds as if it is coming from the front of the car. I have a bad feeling it might be trans but hope its not. I've had fluids recently changed. I have now also noticed that I am leaking some oil. Two identical spots on each side of the underbelly of the front almost parallel to where the wheels are. Oil Leak Show Above
Is the check engine light on?
Have you pulled any codes from the OBDII port?
Which fluids did you get changed?
Were you able to trace the oil leak to the source? Photos of source helps a ton
Try to record the grinding sound if you can and take note of what rpm and gear it happens.
The more info we can get, the better we can help. These trans are really sadistic and known to fail. I'm not as knowledgeable as the other members here, but I would start looking into the AV6 swap as a contingency plan.
*Fingers crossed*
No check engine light on
Mechanic ran for codes, none came back
Oil and oil filter, and transmission was either changed or topped off, I believe it was changed and filled.
I will try and record, I try to not drive it much incase I'm doing major damage but I keep trying to identify it better to get help.
(Side note I've already been familiarizing myself with AV6 swap as much as I can, seems sometimes inevitable for these cars) Picture of underside where leak is falling from.
I took this picture by sticking my phone under the belly and have the camera centered up right where the spot (at least the one on the right) is located.
I was able to get two clips of what the scrape sounds like. It is typically on long stretches of acceleration, on slight inclines when I’m just hovering between 1st and 2nd for a medium amount of time. If anyone has any idea what the cause is please enlighten me!
Are you in manual or D5? Does it do it in both modes? At a specific RPM?
As far as your picture, there is nothing there. You would need to get under the car, use a flashlight, and look up toward the valve covers and see if you see anything leaking (drips).
I'm always in D5, I haven't tested out manual mode yet. It seems to be between 1000-2000 rpms right at 1500 almost. I looked back at my pictures and realized it didn't show much, I'll look into it further later. I found some potentially interesting stuff on this that I'm gonna look into tomorrow.
I certainly hear your torque converter whining in the first video; that should be enough to convince you to replace it before the remainder of the transmission goes for lack of hydraulic pressure; a lot of people do ignore this sign unfortunately...
The second video sounds like the torque converter is grinding/binding. Here's video of a Honda pilot (similar automatic transmission design) with similar sound; ultimately their torque converter being the culprit.
This looks and sounds pretty much identical to my issue, thank you. I haven't been able to find anything after many searches. Same sound, and same area of rpms when it happens. I can tell its when he's already in motion and tries to apply more pressure to the pedal, which is the same with me when this takes place.
