CL trannys have been known to go out below 100 k, although there was never a recall acura did extend the warranty on them but now after 10+ years,that warranty is no longer in effect.

how many miles do you have on your tranny and what number is it?

mine blew at 105 k for my first gen 3.0 ,now i have 30 k on the rebuilt.

wow. i never knew that. my bro's got a 1st gen cl and his tranny gave up on him at around 100k almost exactly if i recall.

ya one of my friends tranny blew every 50 k,he has 200 k and replaced it four times,its pathetic but our j30 motors are tanks in comparison

First Tranny at 127k miles.
second tranny in another first gen started showing signs at 55k miles then sold the car
I said no more Auto Acura's so I got a CLS6 and bid farewell to all those problems.

the six speed haven't shown any problems ha?

hopefully im getting one once funds are a go

the only thing that is a "known issue" is that second gear sometimes has a trouble like grinding and stuff but thats rare. By rare i mean that it happens once in a great while.

Otherwise, the car is 100% for me and I drive it like hard every day revving the J32A2 to 7k RPM almost every day. And it loves it.

haha off course you could WOT All day and they still stay strong!

The car is a workhorse too I have to admit. I mean i drive it everyday and I put 25-35k a year on it.

But yeah, the trannies may be shit, but the styling of the car is what makes it great. The first first gen that I had was a 99 3.0 in Black. When the tranny died on that one, I bought a whole 99 CL 3.0 with 52k miles. Pulled the tranny out of that to put in the black one so that the "new" teal one could get fixed and ready to pull the parts from the black 3.0. So when it came time to swap parts, I took the black to the shop, left it there for a week and when I came to pick up a car, I was driving a BEAUTIFUL teal (dont know the actual color name) with 1/2 the mileage as the black one. Drove that for a while and then sold it because I thought that it started showing sings of death.

Here are the pics of my loved teal CL:







And the rims that I painted myself:



And the engine covers to match the rims (yes, the intake was really that short. Positive side was that there was no UFO hum):

6MT FTW

lol dont rub it in

When I sold mine (2 weeks ago) it had 189,000 on it. Original Transmission, but I had been babying it for the last 30,000. It was starting to shift hard and I was starting to see more and more fragments on the drain magnet when I changed fluid.
There is a guy on another forum (AZ) who had his rebuilt and added an in-line filter and a cooler. Which I highly suggest if you plan on keeping these first gen autos in tip top shape!

yeah the automatic cls and older tl's and 3.2tls have trans problems, all of the manual cars have had no problems, ive only seen a handfull of rsxs come in with third gear poping out of gear. all i can say is if you have an auto, be sure to buy your transmission flushes at the dealership, ive flushed out transmissions with like 45k on them and the fluid is dirty and the magnetic drainplug has a pile of metal on it.

I am @ 147k and my a/t is fine. Now whether or not it has already been done I dont know. Acura has no record of it.

That's really unusual for a Honda tranny to have a set time for it to blow. It could be just a tiny engineering flaw that affects the whole system. The key is finding that flaw.

second gear over heats in the 5AT and as for the 4AT's, its just poor engineering. Its a very well known problem in the 1997-2003 CL's and 1999-2003 TL's along with certain MDX's and Odyssey's

^ +1 for settling my question!