2011 GT - Transmission Issues?

Hi All,

I check this forum almost daily for all the great advice given here. Much appreciated.

My vehicle is a 2011 GT Automotic 4WD, with just over 1K miles now.

My problem happened halfway into an hour drive on the highway. I was following someone, so I was driving in and around 60-75mph. At one point, I think I fell below 60mph and the automatic transmission shifted down to 5th gear, and when I tried to speed up back over 60mph, the car did not respond and accelerate. At this point, I could smell something burning, not alot but very distinct and noticable. I slowed down because I wasn't sure what was happening. After less than a minute of this, I decided to try and catch up with the person I was following and everything seemed ok again. But I did smell that burning smell a 2nd time, as I was driving maybe about 5 minutes later. Not sure at what point that occured and if the automatic was in between the 5th and 6th gear again.

On my drive home though, I had no issues, and I was regularly driving 70+ mph. I probably have to bring it into my dealer, but I am not sure if this is something that they could repeat as it only occured once in a short span of 5-10 minutes. I am not the greatest when it comes to cars/mechanics, so any advice or opinions on this would be very helpful to me.

Thanks in advance!

No codes thrown? I would take it to the dealer and at least tell them what happened. Best of luck.

Jaxan said:

At one point, I think I fell below 60mph and the automatic transmission shifted down to 5th gear, and when I tried to speed up back over 60mph, the car did not respond and accelerate.

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This is strange if you were not accelerating. CX9's transmission stays at 6th gear above 42 mph unless you try to accelerate.
The fact that you smelled something burning indicates high possibility of transmission issue.
This could indicate failure of AT temp sensor. i.e. your AT overheated. It went into limp mode for a while to protect itself.
When it cooled down, it went back to normal.
Just my guess.

did the trans shift hard at any point?

My points on this are:
- rough or abrupt shifting - indicate mechanic problems inside AT
- loss of power (AT temp sensor or overheating)

ceric said:

This is strange if you were not accelerating. CX9's transmission stays at 6th gear above 42 mph unless you try to accelerate.
The fact that you smelled something burning indicates high possibility of transmission issue.
This could indicate failure of AT temp sensor. i.e. your AT overheated. It went into limp mode for a while to protect itself.
When it cooled down, it went back to normal.
Just my guess.

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You're right. Thinking about it more, I was probably already in 6th gear. But it would not accelerate past 60mpg, and it made me feel/think like I was stuck in a lower gear.

The transmission did not shift hard at any point. I'll bring it in this weekend, to have it checked out. Thanks for the advice/opinions. I'll report back with my findings, in case anyone else is curious or experiencing similar issues.

Thanks!

Just curious as to what happened?

Here is a theory which is a bit of a stretch: You went into limp mode for unknown reasons (but hasn't that problem been fixed by Mazda already?) and you just so happened to be in back of a Toyota. (All Toyotas emit a sulfer like smell when they accellerate, even brand new models, and you really smell it when you're behind em') or maybe you were in back of a car making a burning smell.?