NICEUP

I have 2 questions?

1) Does anyone use thier sport shift and how do you get the best out of your sport shift? Please tell me?

To me I have no use for it because the auto tranny gets my going just as fast. I do not have much experience with manual cars, but can someone tell me what is the use of the sport shift without the ability of going fully manual with clutch and all.

2) Besides having the extra gear what is the real advantage of the 5 speed tranny?

To me they both have the same power and they both get the car going just as fast. I think (correct me if I am wrong) with all the tranny problems acrua has, having that extra gear is asking for more tranny problems!!

corey415

1) The Sport Shift that we have on the TL is mainly a gimmick. It seems that people get faster times by gate shifting.

2) The extra gear provides for better fuel economy and it also makes the TL faster, I believe it is .5 sec difference for the 4-speed 99TL and the 00-02 TL-Ps. I think the extra gear allows for a shorter 1st, 2nd, and 3rd gear.

NICEUP

what do you mean by gate shifting

Dolent

Gate Shifting: 1-2-3-D4
Not using D4 alone or using SS.

vandy786

Do not gate shift. You can get good times with SS but it takes quite a bit of practice. I can't give you a before and after analysis because I've only been to the track once but here's what happened. I drove a lot in SS for the first two years I had my TLS. Then I went to the track with a friend and my best of 4 or 5 runs was a 14.7@96.3MPH, which is a pretty good time. I used SS. The main issue with SS is that there is a shift delay (lag) and you may need some time for practice to ensure you don't hit the rev limiter or shift too early in every gear. As far as 5th gear, it's basically the highway overdrive gear that lets you do just a tad above 2000 rpms at 70MPH on the highway and get 30 MPG even though you have 260 hp. The 4th overdrive was basically for city driving and it too lowers the revs and increases gas mileage. I get 32.5/23.5 MPG highway/city out of my TLS and I'm real happy so I can see why Acura left those gears unchanged for 2004.