bdawwg

Hey, just looking for input on experience with Stage 3 on a RDX used, obviously, as a daily driver. I hear some people say about other car brands that running a tune on a daily because the normal use can lead to issues when components are getting pushed. I'm slightly worried I'd blow the turbo or something.

I'd like to flash a phearable tune on an otherwise stock 2020 RDX Aspec.

Any reliability issues or repairs needed that anyone has experienced with a stage 1, 2, or 3 tune? What mileage and use history?

tsloan71

Unless you are running a heavy dialed intune that stresses your components I think you are safe.
These are OTS tunes. They still are well within the OEM parameters of operations. Once you start putting bigger turbo's and messing around with pushing the boundaries you might start seeing failures.

Rob5150

probably have over 450hp out of mine big turbo and methanol and beating the crap out of it for 50000 miles so far and have had
no issues other than traction!
I don’t think any OTS tune will hurt it at all

tsloan71

See: Perfect example of someone who has heavy modded parts and tune and he so far hasn't had any issues.
Maintenance is key to everything. Do your scheduled maintenance and every once in a while lift your hood check your oil. Top off if needed clean the engine bay and look for obvious issues a lose hose clamp etc. It will go a long way and it will help you get familiar with your engine and parts locations.
I had a EVAP hose I completely forgot to slide the clip back over when I was changing a part. Drive fine for a week and the one day I get on it. It blew the hose off the intake cause it wasn't clipped got out and quick fix cause I knew where to look where I was working.
Get in the habit of every 2 weeks pop your hood and wipe the motor down. It will go along way in getting you to being able to visually see a possible issue.

jeffrey sousa

ya seems they built these fairly durable. You don't see much for major issues unless people start pushing past the know FWD limit of 470whp or something custom no one has done before. the powertrain is pretty strong impressed really I would just go tiny early on scheduled maintenance as a best practice especially if you are going to beat on it daily.

sonyfever

Exactly, that is why I don't understand why people do oil analysis on their stock RDX. The small differences are more or less theoretical, and unlikely to translate into real world durability difference.

Unobtanium

Do these tunes cause any shifting abberances like BMW tunes can if you don't change the TCU?

eVojlib

If the vehicle is full bolt on with a stage 2 turbo you will most certainly have some issues overloading the transmission software.

What ends up happening is in the 1st 2 gears the transmission is desperately trying to shift but it can't, this results in popping or sputtering between gears.

If your in a more extreme climate its even possible the transmission temperature will cause some short shifting coming out of 4th and 5th gears, you can combat that by allowing the car to cool between runs and or install a transmission cooler.

If you had access to command shift points you may be able to work around this; however, any RDX I've seen making over 375 WHP+ will experience this problem.

Sure you can use manual mode in S and do the shifting; but in some way your going to piss off the TCM to some degree and there's no guarantee you'll have perfectly clean shift points.

If you go to the 2:10 mark in this video you will hear what I'm talking about, and as you add more power it only gets worse.

Note: Video is from Mike at Axion who is great to work with for upgrading your RDX.

sonyfever

Nice analysis! The regular 10AT only brings disappointments the harder it works, a Type-S 10AT would improve RDX driving dynamic considerably even with the 2.0T.

Rob5150

Transmission can’t make shifts quick enough under big power
-have to use the boost by gear on 1/2 and 2/3 shifts- cut boost down till transmission can handle it

eVojlib

We can take away that the transmissions used in the Type S models are beefed up over the standard units found in say RDX's or Accords.

They also are capable of commanding shifts slightly faster then what we would see in 2019-2021 RDX's; however, the 22 RDX ASPEC's have revised TCM Software giving them faster shifts with no changes to the gear-set.

My guess it yes the Type S variants would be better suited to handle power in excess of 400 WHP / 500 TQ with reliability in mind.

In an Accord 10AT you are working with a significant difference in vehicle weight, but in the case of the much heavier RDX this will factor in to how quickly the TCM will put you back in the friend zone.

There really isn't much you can do other than turn it down a bit, otherwise you're not going to see repeatable reliability.

So with this said the RDX will be stuck in the mid 4's to 60 and 1/4 mile of mid to low 12's, with the transmission being the limiting factor.


This is most certainly the only way unless we are able to modify the TCM tables, and some additional cooling and weight reduction.