ohheck

Hello. New to this forum and have a question. I recently purchased an '03 3.2TL with 60k on it from my local Acura dealer. I know the original owner of this car (he works with me and is 80 years old) and have all the service history in addition to my conversations with him about the car. He traded it for a new 09 TL. The car is in pristine condition. The dealer went through the car before putting it on their lot and I have a complete service list of all that was done to it, which was nothing major. However, the original owner had not had the transmission fluid changed and was about to do so when he traded it. I followed the dealer's recommendation and had the transmission flushed and replaced with new fluid. Shortly after this was done, I noticed a whine that changes in pitch. It happens from a dead stop and increases in pitch, then drops and again increases with each shift. (It reminds me of a car I had many years ago, that had a whine in the ring and pinion gear in the rear end.) I didn't hear this before they did the work. I took the car back to the dealer about this and they inspected it and also replaced the fluid and checked for metal filings and found everything ok. The car shifts normally with no jerks or otherwise hard upshifts or downshifts. I checked the VIN # against the list of TL VINs that were involved with the transmission recall and my car's VIN is about 20k #'s later than the range of the recalled transmissions. I did purchase an extended warranty with this car simply because of the mileage and it was out of warranty. It is an exclusionary warranty that covers virtually everything on the car, including the transmission. Am I being paranoid about this whine or is there anything you would suggest that I do further at this stage? Thanks in advance for any suggestions. :dunno:

AcuraTL

The whine you hear is not the alternator whine through the speakers, right? Also, Acura does not recommend flushing the tranny, just simply drain and refill.

ohheck

The whine is only present when the car is in gear. I've also checked it with the radio off. The whine is still present. Did not know that Acura doesn't recommend flushing. I relied on the Acura service manager's advice at the dealership where I've been doing business for the last 20 years. Since he gave me the tranny flush for the same price as the fluid change, I had no reason to think it was maximizing his profit line. Thanks for the reply.

A-series

If it was the dealer that did the tranny "flush" or refill than you should be fine, they wouldn't have performed a true flush, but rather they either drained and refilled it several times or only the once, either of which is fine. If you took it elsewhere and told them to do a trans. flush, based on advice given by the dealer, than it might be an issue.
As long as what is in there is genuine honda/acura ATF, I wouldn't worry about it. I've heard similar descriptions (and actually heard similar noise while in the car) on several older cars, both H/A and other brands. Normally it's most noticeable at low rpms in top gear but it depends. It's either a normal symptom of age and isn't anything to worry about, or it may eventually start to act up in other ways, but regardless I would just keep up with regular maintenance and not worry about it.

ohheck

A-series. Thanks for the reply. The only service people who have worked on this car is the Acura dealership where it was bought in 2003. When that dealer did the "flush", he specifically told me that the process would remove the old fluid from the torque converter as well as the transmission itself. It was refilled with H/A fluid. Based on what you've said, I'm not overly worried about the "whine"...just more curious about why there was no "whine" prior to the "flush". At any rate, as I mentioned earlier, I have an extended warranty that covers it.....just in case. Thanks for the info.