Hotwired05

Ok, this is kind of funny so I thought I should share..Late last night I was driving to get myself some smokes at a 7-11, and on the Burger King parking lot across the street I saw a bunch of Civics and Teggys.. so I decided to swing by and see whats going on.. After a few minutes of BS, this guy comes up in a 08 TL-Type S with Auto tranny, and exact same mods I have.. except I think I'm a little heavier because of the A-Spec 18s..He starts making fun of the 6-speed asking if I'm tired yet of driving a stick in traffic and etc.. So long story short we decided to do a run.. Went down to a local road which leads to nowhere really, with nothing but fields and woods on either side..so we do a rolling start at 5mph and almost immediately I get ahead and pretty much stay there the rest of the run, very very slowly walking away....soo he calls BS and says lets do from a standstill, so we go and Again I shoot out in front, even more then I did from the rolling start...Back on the lot he again calls BS and starts walking around my car to see if I have any mods on that I didnt tell him about... Later on that night, he does a race with a 07 TL with stick shift ( Non type S) and guess what.. he finishes the race neck and neck with the 07 TL ( also almost identical mods, intake and spacer, nothing else)
Is there really that much of a difference??? The guy left disappointed saying he should have bought a stickshift, but why such a difference in performance between AT type S and MT ??

notbrant

iTrader: (2)

Narrower gearing helps, also you might have better tires, and MTs put more power on the ground than the AT, I am not sure of the technical information, but I am sure the torque converter has something to do with it.

F23A4

As with the Accord V6, it has to do with powertrain loss AND gearing. Though the TL-S is a performance oriented sedan, I'm of the mindset that Honda typically regards fuel economy first when designing their automatic transmissions.

Yonkers914

iTrader: (1)

Iv beaten plenty of auto type-s with base 6mt. The tranny makes a big difference. Especially up top when the auto goes into 4th gear the car practically shuts off. Nice kill
!

TylerT

iTrader: (1)

^ +1, I always hated 3rd to 4th in the Auto ..

I took my Accord 125 this morning .. 4th gear in the 6MT doesn't stop pulling.

Sonnick

^^ He's not kidding.

But dude, seriously, where have you been? Lol. The MTs in Hondas have always been quicker than the ATs.

Nice run and the outcome was as expected. A good driver in the MT should take out the AT without a problem. I ran a fellow Accord with I/E (5AT) with my car fully bolted and put about 5-6 cars on him by the top of 3rd. Huge difference. The Honda automatics lose so much power through the drivetrain, and their gearing is longer. With the little bit of torque we have (well, the TL-s doesn't suffer from this torque defecit), the gears should be shorter to better suite these cars.

erick3

the 07 base tl's didn't come in 6mt.

Hotwired05

you could be right.. I'm not sure on the year but it was a TL, with navi, and a stick shift..I think youre right, I think ever since the TL-S came out in 07, the six-speed became restricted to only the TL-S.. Could have been an 06.. It was hard to tell from the outside cause he had Type S 10 spoke rims on it, Type S headlights and tail lights..

I hate cars

I could see why he would be surprised. Many of the quicker torquier cars are quicker with an auto.

But with Honda and it's lack of torque, terrible 5at ratios, did I say lack of torque lol, the manuals are considerably quicker.

F23A4

Dare I say MOST Hondas with manual transmissions are dramatically quicker than their automatic counterparts. (Almost to the contrary, the margin between both transmission types on torque-rich Nissan VQs is nowhere near as great.....and with the VQ37HR, it appears the AT posts better numbers.)

That said, I am eager to see how the numbers IF a 6AT TL SH-AWD debuts.

princelybug

iTrader: (16)

Nice kill. It's the torque of the manual tranny that helped you out.

AtlM5

Really the main thing is the gearing. That is why the g37s are quicker, because of 7 gears + quicker shifts from the auto. The only downside is the DTloss but the gearing makes up for it.

Hotwired05

.. before my TL-S, I used to own a 08 Maxima, with their new CVT automatic transmission which I hated, cause It was just plain weird, but it grew on me later on.. Especially when I started racing and beating cars that a 2006 Maxima with a 6 speed couldn't beat.. Yes it felt weird as hell, sounded weird, but the car had balls, even with a auto.... it was a little laggy at the start, but once you floor it, your RPMs go up to about 6000 and stay there, no shifting.. all you do is keep the gas pedal on the floor and the wheel straight (car had crazy torque steer) and see your speedo steadily climbing..problem was that once it got past 75-80mph.. the car wasnt gaining speed that good anymore...and that is where most 6-speed Maximas would take me... Glad I got rid of it tho (was a lease).... because I absolutely love my TL-S and I missed the good ol' stick shift.

Bread-A Spec

look at the rear bumper,have fog light or not,and side mirror signal

Mr_skillet

has to do with the gearing, and the final gear ratio, I don't have the math with me, but when eveyrthing is taken into account, the MT ends up with shorter gearing ratio (the math is on some thread i saw a while back here in AZ). plus you probably launched it much better then he did (assuming he didnt' brake torque).

Also, the stock weight of the A/T is ~200lbs heavier than the M/T version assuming he doesn't weigh significantly heavier than you and he doesn't have a huge sub +amps to weigh him down further.

All in all, the gear ratio plus your launch probably made the biggest difference

I hate cars

Weight difference is 100lbs max. The manual is light but I can still pick the auto with torque convertor up with one hand so it's not 200+ lbs heavier.

Gear ratios are a big part of it. But there's the torque convertor and pump that take energy. More powerful cars overcome this easily and the additional torque multiplication of the TC, no lifting on the shifts, and much better launches make the auto faster in many cars.

The TL uses a surprisingly low stall convertor. Throw a 2,800-3,000 stall in there and it's a whole new ballgame. The autos would run with the 6mts from a roll and out launch the 6mts from this one mod. Of course, once you're in 4th in the auto it's game over no matter what else you have done short of a turbo.

Blazing GT

nice kill...the other car was probably a 2004-2006 because there was no MT in 07-08 Base