Thanks to a very random and kind donation by Hate2work, I was able to purchase the Amsoil 5w30 Synchromesh MTF fluid to install in my Acura RSX.
I have the 5speed version of the car. In other Acura forums, many people have experience 2nd gear grind and 3rd gear pop-out in their 6speed tranmission. A few people have experienced mitigation of these problems by using the Amsoil synthetic fluid.
Even though my tranmission has no such grinding problems, I wanted to try out the Amsoil to see if there was any difference. It was a really big price difference. My local Honda sells the Genuine Honda MTF fluid for only $2.50/quart. When I ordered the Amsoil fluid, it came out to be $25 for two quarts! (So pricey!)
As someone who is currently unemployed, that's a lot to me. I went ahead and had a chance to change out the fluid during the Christmas break. The car only takes 1.8 quarts of fluid, and it's as easy to do as an oil change. The trick is to put the car on 4 jacks so that the car is level for the drain, otherwise you won't be able to drain all the fluid. Open the fill bolt (always do this first, because you don't want to be stuck in the situation where you've drained the fluid and can't loosen the fill bolt!), then open the drain bolt. Drain and Close bolt, then fill with MTF, then close the fill bolt.
The drain bolt is under the CV joint, and the fill is the one beside the rubber plug.
Let me give some background information about how the car was like before, when I was using the Genuine Honda Fluid.
When cold, the transmission would shift just fine, except there were some mild problems shifting from 1 to 2.
Basically sometimes there would be a little extra resistance during the travel along the shift, along with a "clunky" feeling when the gear was trying to seat into 2nd. The only way I can describe it is like try to shift into three ball bearings. When the transmission is fully warmed up, these go away completely, and shifting is quite smooth. Because of these issues, I always shifted quite slow when the transmission hadn't warmed up yet.
After:
Now that I've switched to the Amsoil Synthetic Fluid, the biggest change was the cold-weather shifting. The shifting now feels like the tramsmission is warm all the time. No resistance, no clunking, no nothing! I can even shift quickly for the first shift and there is no hesitation. It's pricey, but I'm going to keep running Amsoil in the future.
Since I had a good experience in the fluid, I might give Amsoil SSO a try. Still though. I can't justify a 70$ oil change at the moment when I can do one with PP at $25.
