Hello all, I am hopefully the proud owner of a 2004 Acura TSX 6-speed manual. I have recently purchased the car at a fairly good price and the car has 124k miles on it. However, with that said it does have a few issues that I would like to get some feedback on and put a game plan together to address them. I paid close to 8k for the car and have several thousand left to fix any remaining issues.

The bad:
-Has not had any timing chain maintenance ever, so the first thing I want to do is to address this. So, what is the best way to do this? just order all oem parts and replace? or do any of you guys upgrade the tensioner with something like the Skunk 2 K-series tensioner?

-Transmission has a tough time going into gears with a high rpm shifting.... no grinding but it literally fights me going into gears when I make a hard pull close to redline and try to shift. Especially 1-2 and 2-3.... the rest of the gears seem to be OK.... this sounds like worn out syncros yes? Normal driving it is completely fine, no issue at all.

-Any other problems or areas I should be aware of or can address at this time? I have come from a pure B-series background and I must say K-series is quite different in almost every regard.

Thank you all for any feedback you can provide... and onto the pictures

 

Good thing about timing chain is it doesn't need maintenance, just regular oil changes but do make sure the cover isn't leaking.

 

Yup, no maintenance needed for chains, chain and tensioner should be good for a long time.

Change the oil in your trans, will make a world of difference, for starters.


I picked my TSX up with 80k on it and have done the following maintenance items:

- Brakes all around
- New Battery
- New alternator
- New auto tensioner
- New Trans fluid


Need a starter but have been putting it off because it's a PITA.

 

Doing a starter is easier than you think. Just unbolt Intake plenum, and slide it over a and you will have room

 

Yea, it's not bad but since my Integra is down in the garage I have to do it outside. It's cold out hahah!

 

Buy Redline MTL and change the trans fluid. Also drain the clutch, and brake master cyl. It's a good idea to change ALL the fluids.