seeya1

04 TL A/T 83,000 miles 3rd & 4th gear pressure switches replaced as well as fluid 10,000 miles ago.
Driving home from work minding my own business and all of a sudden my car falls on its face. RPMs rev up but MPH do not. I quickly shift ino neutral coast into a parking lot shut the car off. I check the tranny fluid all is good. Start it back up drives as if nothing was wrong. Next day about 10 min. of driving same thing happened. I put it in neutral shut it off while still on the road and started it and whalla fixed again. No check engine light no codes stored.
Knowing I have something going on I head to the stealership and see if they can't tell me what's going on. They keep it for a day and tell me there is an internal fluid pressure switch that is not working properly. Stated that I needed a new transmission.
How is it that after shutting it off the problem goes away and why does it not fail until everything is warmed up?
Is there any hope for this transmission? I tried though the dealer to goodwill it and she said her rep. did not see any documentation of fluid changes so they would not honor it. I have had an Acura as one of my cars for 20 years is that not good enough? I'm thinking of calling corporate myself and pleading my case.

mindanaomoro

It's an uphill battle going through those mofo stealership.
Specially if your're not the original owner, or even if you're the original owner if you don't service with them, they wont support you for goodwill, Good luck.
You're best option is to go to a local trustworthy trans shop to rebuild and use update components.

roof2006

That's what mine did when it died at 110k miles. I dropped it by the dealership hoping that it was something easy or that I could get some goodwill out of them. No dice, so I towed it back to my mechanic - he installed a rebuilt transmission for $2500 total. (dealer wanted $6,750.) One of the dealer mechanics took it on a test drive, and got himself stranded for half a day when it quit working on him. (I warned him.)

Out here in CA, I think the dealers would warranty it under 100k miles. They are correct that your transmission is shot - if they can't warranty it; get it towed somewhere cheaper for repair.

Sutitan

Sounds eerily similar to how mine died a few years back. It jumped rpms twice in one day (Both times leaving toll booths on the highway. it dropped into 2nd gear both times). it failed when I pulled into my driveway. You can dig up a thread i wrote on my experience somewhere on this forum

seeya1

Thanks for the replies even though its not good news. The thing I don't understand is why it doesn't do it all the time. I drove it today and nothing it drives like normal.

I hate cars

Try to find a shop that's actually good at diagnosing. They're hard to find these days but there are some good ones. There's a great one where I live, one I used to work at back in the '90s.

It can be a mechanical problem. If the transmission is on it's way out and it's producing a lot of clutch material and metal, it can clog the internal filter. When you shut the engine off, all of the crap will eventually fall back into the "pan". You can get it nice and warm and drain it. Once it's empty, pour some cheap trans fluid quickly with the drain plug out and the car tilted toward the drain plug slightly and see if anything comes out.

Electronics tend to fail more when they get hot. It's possible you have a solenoid that functions fine until it gets hot. If it were an obvious electrical condition it should throw a code but the ECU has no idea what's going on mechanically other than comparing input speed with output speed and seeing if there's slip.

Sometimes when you have a seal going bad or clearances have opened up you can lose enough pressure that the clutches won't apply but it would behave exactly the same each time. The randomness gives some hope that it might be electrical. Ordinarily I would say there's a good chance at fixing it but this seems to be the normal chain of events leading up to a full failure.

You have the option to try cleaning the external trans filter but it's usually the non serviceable internal one that gets clogged. Each shift solenoid has a filter I believe. You can try replacing shift solenoids but they're not cheap. On some cars each solenoid is the same part number so you can interchange them and see if the condition changes. But yeah, you're probably looking at a transmission replacement.

seeya1

I dropped it off today to one of the best transmission shops in my area. He has dealt with this transmission before and knows how it works. He's going to try and diagnose the problem as opposed to the other shops I called that would just replace it. I will give you guys an update as soon as I get one.

seeya1

Took it to a reputable transmission shop they opened it up and found that there was no clutch material. I was metal to metal so after 2500 dollars for rebuild I'm back on the road.He said this is a common problem with this transmission.

TLTrance

Exact same thing happened to mine... My clutch packs were f*cked. And what you experienced with it "working/not working" was just plain luck.. the same kind I had... I was able to "drive" home after 3 instances of this. My car even failed to reverse...

seeya1

TLTrance how many miles did you have when yours went?