Engine code remains K24A2

All this is said to result in only a 5hp increase, but don't forget that due to the recent revisions to the SAE J1349 testing standard, almost all Acura and Honda motors horspower and torque have been revised downward for 2006 so the actual improvement over last year's motor is said to be actually 10hp.

The first 2006 TSX press loaner just became available here in Atlanta, so I jumped at the opportunity to check it out. Unfortunately, this is also the first 5AT TSX that's been in the press fleet here, so we don't have any basis for comparison on our dyno run. There are currently no 6-speed '06s here yet, but we're going to try to get our hands on one in the next month or so.

I took the car over to Dynolab in Marietta, GA, where Arthur strapped it to the rollers which we subsequently spun to 145mph.

Click for full-size

We're pretty sure that the strange loop shown in the dyno plot is the point where the torque converter finally locked up. It's a little strange that it didn't happen until nearly redline, and you can see that below that point the slippage of the torque converter was costing the car some power and torque. Inside the car, it was strange as well because I've never felt a car lose rpms at full throttle on a dynojet before. Perhaps there's some trickery going on with the drive by wire which momentarily cuts the throttle as the torque converter locks, in an effort to disguise that event to the driver and passengers. Obviously, the false peak of 180hp must be thrown away as it's clearly an artifact of this step, but after the torque converter locked up this car put down a pretty healthy peak power of 175hp. On the road it feels quite nice - much better than the '05 TSX, which had a very subtle benefit from VTEC. On my own '04 TSX baseline dyno, if you compare the difference in the power level at 6000 rpms (just as the VTEC switches over) and at the car's peak (in VTEC), it's only about 20hp. On this '06, the difference is roughly double that, at a little over 40hp! This can very obviously be felt on the road and it gives the '06 that sense of urgency and a bit of an added high-rpm thrill that's lacking on the '04 and '05 TSX. The rev limiter remains at 7300 rpms on the '06, and it's still not enough - particularly since the car now pulls more strongly up top, it feels like it could use another 500 or so rpms.

Conclusions

Videos

Windows Media V9 - 7.0MB (550kbps) - 01:57 Windows Media V9 - 1.38MB (100kbps) - 01:57 DivX 6.0 - 7.8MB (570kbps) - 01:57 DivX 6.0 - 1.6MB (120kbps) - 01:57