Sorry in advance for the long post. I've been a long time lurker and love all the information on here, I'm hoping some of you may be able to shed some light on my transmission issues.
I bought my auto 2015 FR-S in late May. At about 1K miles, I noticed that occasionally when I was in sport mode (Edit: or manual mode), I would get hard, notchy shifting, particularly going into 2nd or 3rd gear. The most interesting thing, is that if I'm getting the hard shifting, and I pull over, turn the car off, and turn it back on, it starts shifting smoothly again. Exactly as described in this previous post:
http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showthread.php?t=80500
I tried everything I could to consistently recreate the problem to no avail. It happens probably every 3 times I drive the car. Sometimes it will happen when I put it into sport mode(Edit: or Manual Mode) with a cold engine in the morning, and sometimes it will happen after I've been going 80MPH on the highway for half an hour. Seems totally random. I tried all the obvious things like making sure I wasn't letting off the gas during acceleration or doing anything weird. I tried resetting my computer as well by disconnecting the battery for 20 mins.
If it is happening in normal auto mode, it's much more subtle.
I took it into Toyota a couple weeks ago, and was unable to recreate the problem for their tech since I turned the car off. They said that next time it happens and you're in the area, stop by and keep the car on so I can show them the issue. Sure enough, 1 week later I was in and the tech agreed right away that something was wrong. Multiple techs and service managers drove it that night and they all agreed that something wasn't right.
So I left my car there last Tuesday night and just picked it up last night (Monday). They took OBD data, sent it to Toyota, and their response was to check the transmission fluid and reset the computer. They were unable to recreate the hard shifting during the four days and putting close to 80 miles on the car. They ended up adding half a quart of transmission fluid. They still couldn't recreate the problem so they gave it back to me and told me to drive it and see if it comes back. Sure enough, as soon as I pulled out of my work parking lot today, the hard shifting was back.
I did some datalogging comparisons with and without the hard shifting with my Bluetooth OBD reader and have it all in excel if anyone wants to PM me and take a look at it (I'm an engineer who loves data). I wasn't able to really see anything. I also took videos of it happening:
***Watch the tachometer, you can see it stumble going into second gear.
[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cZIyrmjJZs"]Hard Shift Sport Mode - YouTube[/ame]
[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OClb8zUFu9A"]Normal Shift Sport Mode - YouTube[/ame]
Sorry for the bad quality, youtube wouldn't let me have them in HD.
So here I am. Anyone have any experience with this or ideas on what might be going on? I'm pretty frustrated and don't want to have to drive a rental for another week while they putz around figuring out what's wrong.
Thanks in advance!