Originally Posted By: emg
Originally Posted By: dlayman
I have a 2014 Corolla with the CVT. I like it too. What I DON'T like about it is that is sealed with no easy way to change the fluid and Toyota calls it a "lifetime" fluid, and specifies no change interval.
Subaru is the same, though I believe it's supposed to be inspected every 30,000 miles or so. The fluid is expensive, and the change procedure somewhat convoluted, so I'm not surprised they try to avoid it.
Besides which, I doubt the transmission fluid in my girlfriend's Buick was changed in the 200,000km it travelled before a bunch of other things failed that were too expensive to be worth fixing.
I believe the fluid is sampled and depending on the condition, replaced. I'm not sure the fluid would cause failure - if it gets on the belt, the transmission dies right?
Originally Posted By: Anthony
Originally Posted By: Miller88
Originally Posted By: Kuato
Originally Posted By: Miller88
Now, if someone could figure out how to make them last 200K miles reliably, I'd be on board!
Subaru. Plenty of online forums have guys with over 200k on theirs.
The Nissan ones are extremely unreliable. The Olds 350 diesel of transmissions.
All of the consumer reviews for the latest nissan products have 2 or 3 CVT replacements.
Originally Posted By: Nick1994
The only CVT I've driven is my grandma's 2012 Jeep Patriot. It has the 2.0L too and I hate it. I mean HATE it. It's so slow, it can't even get out of its own way. I just can't get over the no power, why would Jeep design a car like that?
Jeep didn't. Dodge did. It's a Caliber with a different body.
Originally Posted By: hpb
OP, out of curiosity why did you need to rent a car for that trip?
I wasn't sure of the legality of the studded tires in PA and NJ (Turns out they are legal), we were planning on parking near Times Square and I didn't want to subject the clutch in my car to that and out of the three of us, I am the only one that can drive manual transmission. If I wanted to sleep on the way back ... we'd be sitting at a rest area for a while instead of switching drivers. So I just added one of my friends to the car as a driver in case I wanted to sleep on the way back.
Plus, I felt a lot better in a rental with damage coverage for driving in NYC.
The Nissan ones are extremely unreliable. The Olds 350 diesel of transmissions.
All of the consumer reviews for the latest nissan products have 2 or 3 CVT replacements.
Not true about the Nissan reliability. Nissan paved the way for CVT's, and they have a lot more out there than anyone. Of course there will be some bad apples. Yes they had issues when they first released the Murano in 03.
I wasn't a fan the first few times I drove one, and then my mom got an 07 Altima 2.5.
I drove that car about 400 mixed miles in one week ,and realized it worked well with the car.
Car has 120k with no issues. They sell over 300,000 Altimas a year. Add the Murano, Maxima, and the rest of the fleet that use CVT's and that adds up to A LOT of CVT's on the rd.
Have the Subaru ones been around long enough to hit 200K? The reviews for CVT Subaru products are a lot different than the CVT ones for Nissan products. Seems a LOT of consumers are having 2 or 3 CVTs replaced ...
Why did Nissan have to extend the warranty to 120k?
Originally Posted By: BearZDefect
I don't know about reliability, but I test drove a 2015 Corolla with CVT a few weeks ago. This is the newest CVT I've driven, previously it was 2013 Subaru and Nissan test drives. I have not driven any of the latest Honda CVTs.
The Corolla CVT is the best I've driven. I did exactly what I expect a CVT to do - it changed ratios to match the engine RPM to my go-pedal input. Engine RPM stayed steady if my foot was steady. RPM rose near instantly when I pushed down, dropped when I let up. It accelerated nicely at a steady 2,200 RPM. When completely off the go-pedal it did mild engine braking at a steady low RPM to cut fuel.
No idiotic response to inclines like Toyota's regular automatics. The only stupid thing it did was the fake shifts when I put the go-pedal to the floor.
IMO, it improved the performance of the Corolla's old 1.8 engine significantly over the old 4-speed automatic. If it proves reliable then I consider it progress.
The nice thing about the 4 speed auto in the Corolla is it has been around forever, and lasts just as long. You can still get the 4 speed auto on the base model.
