My car is at 50,000 miles now. I know that the transmission shifts harder than usual on a cold engine and once the car is warmed up, the transmission shifts smoothly. Now, something else is up that is not normal. On a cold engine, the acceleration from first gear is not smooth from the stop light. A little bit more pressure on the accelerator seems to make the transmission "slip" a little bit. it's hardly noticeable but could be something wrong. Once the engine is warmed up, this doesn't happen. Should the differential fluid be changed?

 

warm it up first

 

Actually, no.... there's like an 8 page thread on this- warming up a modern engine is not only pointless, it's bad for the engine.


You do generally want to keep it under 3k rpms or so till it's warmed up a bit, but the best way to get it to that state is to drive it (and says so right in the owners manual)

(and to the OP, I can't conceive of any way in which the diff. fluid would have anything to do with the issue you describe... nor does the scheduled maintenance ever call for touching the stuff...(assuming you're not AWD))

 

Same thing happens to me. It goes away once it warms up a bit.

 

Same thing happens to me until the car warms up. I just figure it has something to do with the direct injection & a cold engine.

 

here, before this whole arguement :cough: discussion starts up again...

https://www.clublexus.com/forums/is-...warming+engine

 

yes this happens to me too... doesn't bother me that much

 

I could care less about what a lot of people say with warming up the car. Lots of those people are from Cali, Florida or some warm state. I come from Chicago and I'm going to still warm my car up in cold weather til it's around 1k rpm. On an average in the winter, I warm my car up for 5-7 min. In the summer, I don't warm up as much but still wait about 30 sec for the rpm to drop a little first.

If I don't warm up my car in the winter, it drives sluggish.

 

Whatever. So you'd ignore what Lexus says because you don't like to be inconvenienced and the car is a whole lot warmer inside when you warm it up. Extended idling ruins your engine. Remember all the winter mornings when you're replacing cam chains because they're worn out at 100k miles and those of us who drive away are wondering what you did to your engine to make the cam chains die so quickly.

 

I have had the same thing since new, but mine will only do it if I am in manual mode. Reported it to the dealer twice and they either said it's normal or operating to spec. I've since learned to live with it, but it's still annoying.