1991gs reliability question =

[jamesmetairie]

hi i have a chance to buy a 1991 gs.for about $2000. from a college girl (second owner). it,s got 206,000 miles,a/t a/c,new detachable face stereo,nice interior. nice on the outside except that black trim under the front is hanging on one side and the 3 rd brake light high center is falling apart. not too many reciepts for a/t service etc. i drove it 70 mph for about 10 minutes. no problem. later it ran cool and quiet. front end felt o.k. tranny has it,s own way of shifting,but felt o.k. no big accidents in the past. it,s here in katrinaland,but no katrina damage observed. do you guys think i,ll be buying trouble. i can,t afford to start spending right away on breakdowns. thanks for any advice.

 

[speedin]

hi i have a chance to buy a 1991 gs.for about $2000. from a college girl (second owner). it,s got 206,000 miles,a/t a/c,new detachable face stereo,nice interior. nice on the outside except that black trim under the front is hanging on one side and the 3 rd brake light high center is falling apart. not too many reciepts for a/t service etc. i drove it 70 mph for about 10 minutes. no problem. later it ran cool and quiet. front end felt o.k. tranny has it,s own way of shifting,but felt o.k. no big accidents in the past. it,s here in katrinaland,but no katrina damage observed. do you guys think i,ll be buying trouble. i can,t afford to start spending right away on breakdowns. thanks for any advice.

their very reliable cars. only thing to check is that auto trans. does it slip out of gear? crisp shifts? under full throttle does the shifing behave right? (like going right to redline then a crisp shift). brake stand the auto and see how it behaves (observe the rpm it goes to). then after that just take it to acura and get the trans flushed. and if all checksout after all that then youll be fine

 

[tonys2teg]

guessin automatic trans..
the ecu programs to the driving habbit of the main driver so it prolly was getting used to you. those cars are very reliable. main thing that goes out are distrubtor and main relay and trailing arm bushing. other than that it is a great car!

 

[g3teg97]

the ecu programs to the driving habbit of the main driver so it prolly was getting used to you.

Never heard of that.

 

[tonys2teg]

VERY TRUE.

computers learn driving habbits like accel patterns ie fast driver or granny driver

to determine shifts.

ie do you have an auto car or ever had 1...if so

did you ever loan out your car to some1 and when you get it back and go to drive it ,it felt diffrent during shifts. such as lag

 

[tonys2teg]

i found this
At each of a plurality of sub-time intervals within a fixed time interval, the speed and the throttle opening are accumulated sequentially. Averaged values of the speed and the throttle opening derived at every fixed time interval are used together with an averaged associated acceleration to select a correct shift pattern well matched to an actual running condition of the vehicle.

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/4380048.html

 

[tonys2teg]

found this

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http://forums.tdiclub.com/showthread.php?t=94046&page=3
Ah ok this clears things up for me.

there is not much diffrence between a recently reset trans and a transmission coded to 00011. thing is when it is 00011 it does not learn for me.

When i was playing around, it took about 250+ miles before my transmission would re-learn after being re-set (seemed to be more a factor of how much shifing happened then the acutal number of miles because the miledge it took to leard would vary some but 250 was about average for when i was playing around)

many folks fall into the trap of setting the code to some number feeling it has done somting great, only to find that after it has had time to re-learn it goes back to the way it was. kerma was the one who first found that out. same effect as re-setting the transmission.

my understanding is that 00000 is the same as 00002 i tried 00001 for a bit, but after it finished learning it was almost the same as 00000.

000011 worked for me as it did not seem to learn
as it seems 00011 and 00012 turn of the learning portion (dsp)

well good luck with playing with codes. id love to hear how it works out for you.

I wish i had more time to play. I recently did the kerma line pressure mod, 29 clicks and, with the coding, i think i over did it with the line pressure. id be happy with it someplace between where it was and were it is. too bad un-doing it is so hard.

uping the line pressure did help with the slushy part quite a bit. thing is, going as far as i did, ends up lowering the shift points some. not an effect i wanted, plus some other side effects. I'm sure there is a happy meduim there.

I'll be happy to explain what the effect is in more detail if anyone is interested. but there has been so much written already about it...