omarmo72

Is it normal for an 05 A/T TL with 20,801 miles rupture the first and second cylinder along with a blown head gasket due to piston misfire?

Or for the same car 1 yr later with 42,328 miles to blow the AC compressor, belt, and distributor?

I'm starting to have a feeling that i bought a preowned car from the dealer auction that has been rolled back-or is this normal at low mileage. 2 weeks after i bought at the auction in the summer of 08 the first problem happened and 3 weeks ago the latter happened. I purchased it for 16,300 after all the fees, new brakes and tires it finished for around 20 k but is in mint condition. maybe thats why it was so cheap?? I don't know.

Any thoughts? Any way to check and be sure that's the real mileage of the car?

Thanks again

stock to the bone

damn, no it's not normal under normal driving condition. was the car over revved? yes the price is cheap for an 05 tl with that mileage. does the car has a salvage or rebuild title? Carfax DOES make mistake sometimes. i prefer car history over carfax. You either got a lemon car or you abused the car too much.

omarmo72

i mean i did drive pretty aggressive when i first got it but not till a month in until i was fully used to and comfortable with the car so i couldnt have caused the first problem. my aggressive driving came to a halt as soon as the law caught up to me and i got points out the ass so the aggressive driving didnt last too long.

the title is clean, no rebuild or salvage- 1 previous owner and by the scratches on the inside of the door handle driver side it was a married woman with a big rock on her ring lol i have an extended warranty but its really annoying that im paying a 100$ deductible for each job and im there every other day basically. What would i do to find out if it was in fact a lemon? is that dealt by the DMV or Acura

01tl4tl

lemon varies by state, but its usually about a same problem occuring type car- where its in the shop for more than 30 days and not resolved the same problem
You have a warranty and it fixes each problem right?

Use of 87 octane gas will retard the timing badly- add aggressive use of throttle and that could have caused blown head gasket - what do you mean beyond the gasket was damaged- rupture of 2 cylinders- or was that where the gasket blew- between 2 cyls- thats normal when they fail

blew the ac compressor and belt- thats high revving - those parts not meant to live at the top end of the scale,,
you should see what we do to the ~showroom stock~ race car
Have to keep spare ps pump,alt, etc because speed kills them

Auction cars may have been trade-ins the dealer didnt want, or lease returns that get shipped off somewhere and sold,,,most common car to have problems with~

try seafoam the gas and manifold to restore clean performance
and use ONLY 91 octane gas- use Tier 1 brands- most big name brands, as they have more cleaners in them to help the TL--its very picky about fuel

omarmo72

firstly, i would like to thank you for your enlightening response.

to answer your questions, I use synthetic oil, 93 octane fuel everytime, and it blew between the first and second cylinder.

After reading your post I think its safe to conclude that it may not be the car but perhaps the way I used to drive it. Thanks again for your insight- you answered all my questions

Bearcat94

Lots of people have driven thier TL's "street aggressive" without the problems you report.

I think there might be more to the story - something in the history of the car that you don't know about.

Can't over-rev an AT (afaik), so that shouldn't be the problem.

omarmo72

Do you think the mileage was rolled back?

RonJonTL757

I believe the if the cluster was changed out then the milage will say what the cluster says, but the ECU also has the true milage. Get that checked out

omarmo72

Can they do that at the Acura dealership? or any shop can chck that out

RonJonTL757

Not sure but i know the dealer can do that. They might charge you the $92.00 diag fee

01tl4tl

if you know the last dealer they can look up service records and see if mileage drops
You cant roll back electronics like old school odometers

register with acura 1-800-238-3382 x5 as new owner and see if they have any owner history or records of mileage from warranty claims

Lets imagine the last driver ran on 87 octane, drove like a madwoman, treated it like a business leased car- just a step above drive it like you stole it, and returned it after a year---- ready to blow up.

So how you drove for a month was just the final nail,,,the danger of auction cars

There are other reasons the head gasket will blow but its often cooling failure or oil problem--heat is involved in the deal,,,,which may have caused excess heat on other parts

01tl4tl

bear- no you cant overrev an AT either up or downshifting- it wont allow a downshift if that will cause an overrev, and cuts out fuel or ignition on full throttle approach to redline

The safety bonus of AT over 6MT- those guys blow valve trains with missed shifts all the time~

01tl4tl

Throw a can of seafoam in half a tank of gas for now
Do the intake manifold vac port with seafoam for instant results
Lets get it all clean to see where its at now
Ck spark plug condition- shold be fine but you never know--that overheat thing again

04WDPSeDaN

iTrader: (1)

There are some misleading information so I wanted to clear things up.

Due to our location, busy area, heavy traffic, ect. At approx 20k usually front brakes are low or close to being due. That all varies of coarse due to driving conditions. Same goes for the tires. Poor alignment and harsh driving end result will be tires in need of changing.

The only way they will know about the cluster being swaped is to remove the one in the car. If it looks like any trim pieces, screws ect have been tampered with then the answer will be yes, it was replaced. It may be possible the cluster to have a vin behind it as in a sticker placed somewhere behind the cluster.

These vehicles work off ECU, Coil packs, cam and crank sensors. There is no distributor. As for the A/C compressor is it designed to shut off while WOT, however if your at higher RPM, higher than what the compressor can handle it will be damaged and even fail completely. Compressors don't always stay on they cycle. If your at 6k when the clutch ont he compressor engages your spinning it hard and fast within a blink of the eye.

If the compressor started to lock up you will shred the drive belt.

It is not common for any vehicle to blow a head gasket at 20k. Either it's a mechanical defect from factory or someone was really over heating the engine or enhanced the performance of the engine more than it's designed to handle. For example 250 shot nitrous oxide. There are 100 variables but lots of unknowns, still stand firm with it's not common..

Depending on how bad the head gasket fail it usually affect 2 cylinders. Any 2 next to each other from the spot of the leaking gasket. It will cause misfires because water isn't combustable. You will see the misfire more when the engine is at it's hottest. 2nd hint would be when you take it off idle the misfire becomes worse to where you will see white smoke out the tail pipe.

My honest suggestion would be sell this, move on to another one. Usually the saying is, you get what you pay for. If you got this dirt cheap it's because those selling this knew what was going on and wanted it out of their hair. For the time being I would drive it very calm. Best of luck.

donaldso718

OP, did you go to the Manheim NJ auction?

TheChamp531

iTrader: (3)

Damn, I was a unlucky one also. I had a bent rod and had to replace my engine at 34k miles and I just got the car! Acura told me I was like 1 in a million that had this problem.

01tl4tl

are they going to help you at all on the cost? talked to corp or regional corp warranty rep?

01tl4tl

posible on heat: the radiator took a rock hit and leaked for a while before driver noticed temp was nearly pegged redline
Do that once and 6 months later the head gasket blows
that would explain failure at early age

I should have been more specific than saying full throttle- yes things shut off at a certain point, and its easy to run just below that with ac cranking
the bearings dont take well to running faster than intended
they were made to operate with engine usually in the 2000-3000 rpm range- cruising, easy shift points...with some fun but not full time fun TL= Touring
you move rpm to 5000 all the time and bad things happen

omarmo72

Thank you all for your insight and I spoke with my father and I think we decided we are going to trade the car in to the dealer; when they were replacing my gasket at first they had no idea what it was and once they did they ahd already swapped out many parts and while fixing the issue broken many more so in total they replaced 31 different parts under my hood and the original manufacturer warranty ended 3 weeks after the job, i got veryyyy lucky lol after taking the huge loss they offered we trade in the car for an 08 tl type s with only an additional 4k so i think we are going to look into that offer hopefully it still stands because this car is beautiful, fast and smooth but this particular one has been nothing but a nightmare.

Thanks again guys for all your insight its much appreciated.

omarmo72

yea how the hell did you know that haha

NCTL05

iTrader: (9)

If you got the money go for it. Do anything you can to get away from that lemon. Good luck.

I hate cars

I know it doesn't matter anymore but mileage has nothing to do with a blown headgasket. It's either from detonation or overheating, nothing else. Overreving can bend valves but won't cause a blown headgasket.

01tl4tl

I dont know I would trust that dealer to trade in and set me up in a good car--its the same place that offed this one on you right?

go to a few other dealers, email internet sales division of dealers for offers and prices on what they have in stock

05TLdcc

He didnt buy it from the dealer, he got it at auction. Hey, if the dealer is willing, thats a hell of a deal. Go for it!!!

1fsthatch

It's easy to roll back the miles the dealer can even do it if they want

powerflow

The 3G TL does not have a distributor. It's a distributor-less ignition.

Whoever said that is untrustworthy, if that's truly what they said.

hondadna4

Im sorry but Im not trying to step on your toes but thats bullshyt the "Milage" is not stored in the ECU it is stored in the cluster

Sorry to the guy that bought the car from a auction I think the car was abused by some pissed off husband that found his wife cheating I beleave

No really I would not buy a car from a auction because guess what they are there for a reason someone doesn't want it or sometimes you get good deals but you got done up the butt with this deal.