Hope someone can help me with this or has seen it. When i start my 09 RA after its been sitting for awhile you will hear like 2 clunks and the car lunges forward a little bit and back to where it was orginally. Im wondering if its the clutches engaging and disengaging like it goes in to first gear and back in to park. i never noticed it until recently and i have no problems with my trans. the car is stock besides a tune. Any ideas or help is appreciated.

 

also, trans was replaced early 2011 at 24k now have 46k.

 

Mine is the same. Its normal

 

i just never noticed it before and it seems pretty rough. do you know why it does it only when you start the car after its been sitting awhile?

 

I see you didn't mention anything about fluid changes. You have 22k miles on this transmission. Many people strongly recommend flushing the fluid @ 20k or sooner, even though the "severe maintenance" schedule recommends 30k miles.

Many odd ailments with this transmission are corrected with flushing the transmission fluid and changing the transmission filter. People have gone from thinking their transmission is about to fail to having a perfectly normal transmission with a simple fluid flush and filter change.

My personal car had 1 mishap before my first transmission flush. I had a situation where the transmission didn't grab right away when I gave it gas at a green. Having the transmission flushed and filter changed corrected the transmission behavior.

I don't have any lurches when I start, but there are a couple of distinct "clunks". Lurching may because of putting the car in park w/o setting the parking brake. I personally shift into neutral, set the parking brake, make sure the car doesn't roll, and THEN shift it into park. This ensures the transmission isn't bound up and will be easy to shift out of park when I go to leave where ever I parked it at.

 

Talked to service rep before and was told that it's designed to engage the odd/even clutches simultaneously during start up. Somebody from mitsu verify this please

 

That's my understanding, too - that there IS no "park", as such. It engages reverse and a forward gear at the same time to lock the car down.

Rich

 

i had the tranny flushed at 36k by mitsu. I will give the parking brake a try and see what happens. i guess ive heard it before when starting it just not so loud and never noticed the roll.

 

Key take away, when parking set the parking brake FIRST, then put the SST in "Park".

 

Don't you people start your cars with your foot firmly on the brake?

I can certainly hear two 'clunks' during startup, but they're normal sounding so I'm not too worried about that. But I'd be damned if I knew whether my car lunges forwards or backwards upon startup as my foot is firmly pressing the hydraulic brakes, and additionally the handbrake is engaged.

 

As you mention that i think thats what i did. i always put my foot on the brake and this time when i started noticing i didnt. So i tried it both ways and sure enough no roll with pressing brake. One more question though. do our cars have a little roll when there in park? when my car was off my friend pushed my car in park and had a decent roll to it which is why im assuming the lunge happened when starting.

 

yes, there's some slack/roll when it's in park. It's one of the reasons I always set the parking brake when parking the car.

 

Yup, my RA is brand new (about 1800km on it) and it has all the symptoms you guys mentioned. Distinct clunks when I start the car and a VERY slight lunge also when I start the car when I'm not pressing on the brake.

I was pretty concerned when I first got the car, but when I hear all this on the forum plus given my car is brand new, I'm just going to assume its normal.