Took the 07' TLS in for oil change & tire rotation plus change blown bulbs. I have to be honest, with it being over 100 degrees today my car is very sluggish, I had to use the paddle shifters just to get the trans to kick down when I needed it to. Engineers dropped the ball bigtime with this car when developing & testing! Didn't anyone notice this car being sluggish during high temp testing? My trans wouldn't kick down today until reaching 3,200 Rpm's! Then would just bog down & go back to a sedate state.
Dealer rep offered me $14,000 for it today with 70,000 miles even with 1 carfax accident, might be able to do $15,000. But what can I get for $15,000? Certainly not luxury.

 

Ultimate cooling mod.
Auto trans cooler.
TB bypass.

 

AT Cooler is stock on the OP's car ('07 TL-S). TB Bypass is minor, but take whatever you can get.

ALL cars lose perfomance with heat. It is inevitable. Hot air is less dense (i.e. fewer O2 molecules per liter). Few O2 molecules = less fuel per ignition cycle = less power. Chemistry wins.

 

Oh. How did I miss that damn S! Lol

 

:facepalm thread.

 

There is a lot of threads out there already regarding all this Heat Soak. Just a FYI lol.

 

It's silly to go and trade in your car because it doesn't run as well in this heat.

The next car you find may run worse in the heat...it should be expected.
The east coast is in the middle of a heat wave. It doesn't mean the engineers dropped the ball on anything. I always felt like real world is tougher than testing, especially after 70k miles!

Try driving without the A/C on it may help you out.

 

Heat wave in the east lol

Come to Houston and you guys will be dead.

 

Have fun with all that heat you east coasters. Your getting all the crap we just finally got done with here in Chicago. Last night at 9:30 pm it was still 110 heat index at my house outside of Chicago.
For what it's worth my Type S 6mt doesn't seem to suffer from these heat soak issues. Surprisingly it felt great considering the temperatures.

 

I am in Chitown too

I was concerned with my car performing like crap. It felt like it was in limp mode.

 

Nah all cars suffer heat soak. You type-s guys with AT just have it a little better then the rest in the tranny department.

 

Listen to Dr. Bearcat-he's the man and knows his stuff!

 

its about 100 degrees here now in socal and honestly, i feel the car does very well given the temperature. there is a freeway onramp right by my school i take everyday. it starts uphill and i have no problems merging uphill on the freeway and passing everyone. and yes the AC is on too.

 

they dont know that we only have Hot and Hotter here. we contend with this year around, and yes even during winter months, although we never really have a "winter".

 

Thermometer in my car read 106f today, obviously it wasn't quite that hot, but probly at least 98. The 04 definitely felt the heat!

 

Not gonna lie, I noticed a sligh difference when I did the TB collant bypass. Every little bit helps.

 

Mine was doing the same for the past few days (07 TL-S) while we've had some heat here. I see that the theme here is cars will suffer performance in the heat. I get that, but what I don't understand is why has this gotten much worse with age. When my car was new, I certainly had days when it was really hot out, but the car never bogged down like it does now. Now, when it gets hot out, I basically have to floor it to get it moving and it hesitates really bad. That makes me think that something is (or has) been going bad over time, or one of the sensors isn't doing its job correctly. The problem is reproducing it when I need someone to look into it.

 

be thankful that we don't have that infamous hot soak issues with the 2g acura tls lol

 

I'm wondering if any of the folks here with Redline ATF in their tranny experience the same with the HIGH HEAT and IF the transmission is shifting gay or not?

 

Lol it's been unbelievably hot here. But you know you'd think us Southerners would get used to temps upwards 90°F. We have some serious humidity here. Even the rain is warm when it falls. But at least we do get it enough. Over the weekend it rained almost 3 days straight!

Lol this passed winter didn't you guys get some ice on some overpasses. It did get pretty cold in houston as it did here too. We had enough warnings about ice on overpasses and certain roads. I just couldn't make it up north. I dont know how to drive in snow.

 

Same exact thing her handruin! I've complained to my dealer service & each time they tell me: No fault codes, it's fine. I say BS, when I bought this car new it didn't have this problem, but gradually it happened.

 

Guys, this has been gone over many times before.

Every car gets slower when hot. Certain TLs have an actual problem when they get hot. To the point it's dangerously slow, won't keep up with traffic, you literally have to floor it everywhere you go and it surges badly.

 

so funny that you say that because the rain really does feel warm when it falls, and because of the extreme heat texas has faced the past couple of months. the ground just sucks it up as if the rain never happened. that coupled with the fact that we have 80-90 percent humidity. forget about it!!



yeah we got some flurries, alot and i mean alot of places closed down because of it. we dont drive in the snow. now the rain is a different story.

 

can you pm your email ? i have some pictures of the manifold when i took it off to replace the knock sensor. I would like too see what you think about it. please

thanx man

 

I think mine falls into the latter where there are times when I have to floor it to get it moving and it hesitates and surges where merging into traffic with the sudden loss of power has been scary. I've been trying to find what others have done to successfully fix the problem in the case where it is more than slight degradation of performance due to heat, but rather a real problem.

The best solution I can think of is to stop by the dealer while it is happening and have a tech ride with me while it's hooked up to diagnose it. if there are better alternatives, I'd be happy to try them.

 

I haven't tried it, but I keep seeing Redline Water Wetter where it can allow your car to run cooler? Maybe that can help.

 

Ive tried so many things and as of yet there has not been a parmenent cure that i know of. I cant wait to get rid of this thing. Seeing so many people with this problem i dont think there is gonna be a solution ever. Even my dads Tiguan with a smaller engine and much havier body feels 10 times lighter on its feet....

 

If you don't mind expanding on the info, I'd love to know the things you've tried so far so that I can get a better idea of what things other people are trying to solve this problem. My hunch is that there is a bad sensor somewhere feeding bad data into the computer. if it isn't a sensor, then perhaps some other mechanical component that has worn out which is affecting a sensor. This problem only became more pronounced over time and started about a year ago for me.

I've been very torn with getting rid of my car for similar reasons but I'd like to not go back into a car payment if I can throw some cash into making my car run better even for the next few years.

 

since you ECU learns based on your driving habits, have any of you that have issues tried resetting your ECU?

My '04 AT TL doesn't have any issues when its hot out, even with the A/C on.

 

I've reset the ECU once and did not notice any difference. I've noticed the hesitation and surging mostly when the A/C is on, but it has also happened when the A/C is off. The issue never happened once during this past winter. I've only noticed it when it's hot out. I've been having it happen at least 3-4 times a week and it's always been on my commute home from work, not in the morning.

 

The dealer can't help as the techs are more like glorified code readers and parts swappers. We've had one member trade in his TL-S for another which fixed the problem. Two different TLs, the same driver under the same conditions, one had a problem, the other didn't.

There are a couple threads. One that touches on it is "valve chatter" even though the title is a bit misleading.

One of the odd ball things we've found is turning the traction control off after you start the engine and leaving it off for the whole trip seems to help or cure it in some cases.

In the other threads you can see where we've scanned it, replaced the TPS, I've run it on 109 octane which helped, people have seafoamed it, I've gone with colder spark plugs, relocated the IAT sensor, etc, etc.

I hate to say it but your best bet would be to try turning off traction control and seeing what happens. If I can ever get access to one of the good scanners with live data and all of the advanced parameters for a whole day again I can probably figure something out but the shop I used to use closed down.

 

The dealer said the tech would capture the data and then send it to Acura in California for review. I can't confirm that they actually would, but that's what they said they would do for me if I stopped by while the issue was happening. The cost would be $118 for one hour of service diagnostics. If I can get them to give me the data somehow, I can send it to you if you think it's something that can be analyzed? I don't know if it is in digital form or printed, but I'll ask them. If I were to have them monitor the car, is there a specific scanner or equipment I should inquire about? I don't know the different scanner types, but if I asked about one that does "live data" would that be helpful?

I've been monitoring the valve-chatter thread for a long time, but not recently. I even posted in it a while back with audio clips confirming the pinging in my car while driving. I'll have to go back and read the latest posts to see what I've missed. I'm still using 93 octane. I never went to the 109 like some of you have.

I'll try turning off the traction control to see if it solves the problem. I don't normally leave it off, but I assume that if I start noticing the hesitation/surging that I could come to a stop, disable it, and then see if things improve. I don't know if turning it off after the problem begins would make any difference.

I looked into using seafoam (this morning actually), but I got mixed feedback as to whether it was worth using that stuff. When I was talking to the dealer about the problem yesterday, the guy was insisting I should have had two fuel injector services done by now (I have 73K miles) and that was likely causing the problem. I wasn't confident in that conclusion so I didn't have it done. I also haven't had any fuel injector services done yet.

 

I'm glad the dealer is willing to help. If they made the offer I would take them up on it. There are only a couple things that can make the car do what it's doing which should be obvious in the data. They're either going to see tons of timing being pulled, the throttle not following what your foot is commanding, or a crazy AF ratio. Finding the cause might be a little more difficult but finding what the car is actually doing would be a start.

I wouldn't buy into the injector cleaning services. If you've used a good premium fuel, you should never have to do an injector cleaning. There's enough of a maintenance dose in premium fuel to never have to use this service.

I'm looking forward to your results.

 

I'll post back in the thread once I've gotten my car diagnosed and I'll still try to get a copy of the data. Hopefully it'll happen this week on my way home from work like it usually happens. The dealer is near the end of my trip home which works out perfect. I told them I'd stop in without an appointment, but leave the car running so it doesn't cool down or reset and they agreed to have someone ride along or drive the car with me to capture the data. I don't normally use the dealer, but the convenience of them being right near home and open later compared to my normal garage is why I'm kind of leaning on them for help.

I've always used 93 octane from a tier-1 gas station (usually a Mobile or Shell). I assume that's decent-enough for a premium fuel?

 

And on the other side of the coin - when you finally get a slight downhill stretch and get some free energy (I-695 Outer Southbound, west side, Baltimore.... That long, gradual downhill stretch), drivers don't realize the vehicle coasts a lot easier in the hot density deprived air WITH brakes that are already hot and diminished.

You guessed it! Fender benders galore!!! What a mess the other day when we went over 100 degrees in Baltimore.

Even the mighty Brembo's were asking for a little patience. Not a good time for chronic tailgaters.

 

I have a question. Why is it that only TL's get the heatsoak whereas similar cars like the v6 accord do not have this issue? also a J series engine and similar chassis and engine bay design.

 

I had an 02 Accord V6 for about 7 years. The performance of the TL definitely drops off once the intake starts getting saturated with heat. I can go on a longer drive in warmer weather, and as long as I start with a cold engine and never really stop for any length of time, its fine. Sit at a light a few times, or park the car a little while, and its over.

I have a Scangauge II and Ultraguage, and paid close attention to how various aspects related to drivability. The Accord ran a bit cooler intake temps, and mine had a low temp fan switch that turned on around 192ºF. The TL runs higher coolant and intake temps. However, I did find that it was exceedingly obvious the Accord was DRAMATICALLY more fuel efficient when it started to get really high intake temps. It got slower when it was hot, but not as noticeably as the TL. To me, it feels more like the way the DBW is set up, since the Accord low RPM 'induction sound' used to sound 'hotter' but perform similar at WOT on hot days. It could just be that it was too slow to notice a 10% performance loss or so. I drive around at WOT in the TL all the time, but its typically below 2K RPM. For some reason, it appears the throttle is limited below about 1400-1500 RPM. All of a sudden there is a power surge around 1500 RPM, and then another one at a bit higher RPM. The Accord definitely did not do this, but it wasn't DBW. Not sure how much that plays into it, but could it be the car is physically limiting throttle? I never really experienced any 'heat soak' issues out of the ordinary on the TL, so I can't comment that much.

At least the TL never had warm start problems on me yet. It does not appear to be common on the TL, but my Accord had intermittent issues starting that felt like vapor lock. It always started, just occasionally required 3-5x longer cranking and sometimes had backfires during cranking that would stop the engine momentarily.

 

The TL has a higher compression ratio. I think the Accords are around 10:1 and the TLs are 11:1.... And before anyone says different, the TL and TL-S have the same compression ratio. If it's on the verge of detonation, that extra point in compression will hurt. Does the Accord have engine covers? It's possible the TL's fuel and timing maps are a little more aggressive as well but I've never looked. I know mine runs pretty damn lean during normal use.

I agree. Add in the extra point in compression and higher IATs and you have problems on hot days. I believe the TL runs pretty lean or at least mine does. I believe the battery fixing some of ours with very, very bad heatsoak might be due to it slightly altering the 02 reading. Even though the 02s generate their own signal voltage by design, I believe they're more accurate with the higher system voltage.

I don't think the DBW is limiting throttle but I've never looked at the throttle precentage. That might be a good idea. The reason I don't think so is when it would be in heat soak mode and I would be deep in the throttle but the car was going nowhere I could still hear the induction noise as if the throttle was open pretty far.

Mine is the exact same way. Start it up cold, keep it moving, freeway preferably and you're fine. Stop for a second and it's all over.

To the rest, every car gets slower the hotter it gets, the TL seems to be worse than normal. Then you have a handful of TLs like mine that are practically undrivable when it's hot that was cured by replacing the battery.

 

Move to the southeast, where its not just hot, but typically hovers around 100% humidity as well. We have 2 seasons, Summer and Fall, where Summer lasts from Mid-May'ish through September, and generally sticks around 90's actual temp, 100+ heat index, and occasionally breaches 100F actual temp, with an index of 110+. I can literally count on one hand how many times I've seen snow in my entire life time (3 times), where its stuck to the ground longer than a few hours (once).

Current weather update: November 29th, high for today? 64F

 

It's been hovering around 30ºF here the past few days. It's supposed to dip into the 20's tomorrow. A few inches of snow on the ground, but the roads are salted and cleared.

Until you drive a car thats been sitting outside in below 0ºF weather, you have no idea what it can do to a car. It's almost some sort of anti-heatsoak, with ample performance and near zero traction. The engine never comes up to temp, and cranking the heat just results in a cold engine and warmish cabin.

I even did the reverse UCM a week ago. All the front grills are blocked and I installed a block heater. It still results in 174-176ºF water temps and reasonable IAT's.