Hello, everybody, I've owned my 03 TL-s for a month now and have had 0 problems with it until last week, I don't abuse the car but I have driven it fairly hard a couple of times, one of those times was last week, I noticed when shifting (either on its own or in SS) from 2nd to 3rd the car makes a weird noise...(my best description would be a metal tyne from a yard rake being scraped across a dinner plate) it only seems to do this from 2nd to 3rd and only when aggressive driving has occured, I can replicate it almost on command at every freeway on-ramp, it is a brief noise and doesn't do it in any other gear and the fluid is correct in level and color, has anyone else ever heard this or a similar sound?

 

check the transmission thread. our cars have a weak trans. if u still got warranty head to the dealer right away. and if they cant repeat the problem they will note it down so when your out of mileage by a couple K, they should replace under warranty bc it happened before and they didn't catch it.

 

Shift issues in going from 2nd to 3rd gear are classic symptoms for an impending transmission failure.

There is a 7 year 9 month / 109,000 mile extended warranty on the transmission but not all 2003 TLs are covered. (Coverage depends on the car's VIN number.)

As mentioned by Rajca, read the Tranny Failure Thread for more details:

https://acurazine.com/forums/2g-tl-problems-fixes-117/tranny-failure-thread-566833/