scottmyers

Well, after 500 miles I started to feel a vibration when shifting from first to second gear. Dealer says that it feels like something is in the transmission.. maybe a metal shaving or something. They had it a week and ended up replacing the entire transmission. The car feels great now.

Anyone else have any issues with the transmission?

drck1000

I've got a little over 600 miles now and I do notice a slight hesitation (the only way I can think to describe it) shifting between 1st and 2nd when in stop and go traffic. It usually occurs when just trying to slowly move forward with traffic at less than 5mph. It seems like it can't decide when to shift and then when it decides to, I've already stopped pressing the gas and then it feels like it shifts back down really quickly. In that case, I think it's just me. I otherwise normal driving, I don't notice any vibration or hitch in shifting.

nardeezy

I noticed the same in my car as well (AWD) driving around in stop and go traffic. I also noticed it in the loaner GS (RWD) when I had my car in the shop. I think what you and I are experiencing is normal but the vibration is not.

drck1000

Good to hear that it's not just my car. It kind of got my attention at first because when I test drove, one of the things that I really liked was the smooth shifting, almost unnoticable. But my previous car was a 4Runner, so the transmissions are much different. I never noticed the "creeping jitters" in my 4Runner because I think it stayed in 1st during that kind of stop and go traffic and didn't want to shift until later. I tried playing with shifting between 1st and 2nd "manually" and I don't notice anything out of the ordinary. Since it doesn't do that in normal driving (i.e. acceleration from 0-20+) I've kind of written it off as irritating, but normal. I guess the Lexus engineers overlooked the smoothness of driving in rush hour traffic .

scottmyers

The issue I had was definitly a vibration when shifiting from first to second. Kinda like driving over something small in the road. Very annoying. Glad its fixed now.

SGT

That's strange, I have over 5500 miles and I've never had a vibration that you described. Sounds pretty serious if they had to replace the entire transmission.

scottmyers

Yea, since I haven't seen anyone else with a tranny problem, I guess I was the lucky one... or unlucky one.

TheRupp

12,500 & 13,400 miles, haven't experienced this in either vehicle. I hope this doesn't end up being the previous gen Acura TL & CL transmission

scottmyers

Thats funny you say that. I went through that issue with my 2002 TL. Man that transmission had issues.

TheRupp

My uncle has an 03 TL and he's on #3 already at 40,000 miles

4thone

I have noticed a little hesitation in deciding wich gear the tranny wants .This only happens while driving in slower traffic.With 5000 miles now, I havent had any vibrations.

SteVTEC

The sustaining engineering team for the 3GS program probably wanted to get their hands on the tranny so that they could see what if any issue it was having, and then make improvements to the design as quickly as possible to ensure quality control. The only way to do that is swap the one in the "field unit" (your car) with a new one. This is Toyota/Lexus quality control in action.

scottmyers

Yea, the service tech said that normally Lexus would fly out an engineer for something like this before replacing the unit, but this time they said to just swap it out and get it to them for inspection.

tmf2004

iTrader: (15)

Sounds like great quality service to me.. No questions asked.. They replaced the tranny for you with no headache.... Great job IMO but 500 miles and a new tranny just isn't right..?

scottmyers

OK, its been 1,500 miles on the new transmission with no issues... until yesterday.

On the way home from work I started to notice that when shifting from 1st to 2nd and 2nd to 3rd, it seems to slam into each gear with a big jolt. I tried accelerating very slowly but it did the same thing. I pulled over and shut the car off for a few minutes. When I started the car and drove off it was working normally again. I though that maybe it was just a computer glitch until I went to work this morning and experienced it all over again.

Anyone else ever experience this symptom?

Needless to say its back at the dealer. We will see. I have pretty much had it with this car.