A Detailed Analysis of a Nissan CVT Transmission

The machine is recording all this data and we'll check it out when we get back, I like one thing about this, no auto shut off. It's not turning the engine off, hooray! And I like the fact that it has an actual key, alright? We're back to square one, stop the recording into the file name Nissan, okay? Now as you can see, it's nice and green here and this is the slippage we're gonna see if there's any slippage. The graphs are easy to read so we can play it back fast with my finger.

You know, it's a stage green the whole time which is good, it's not getting into the red or anything and we'll watch one of these pressure sensors here do a combination of them and you can see they're all more or less following each other like they're supposed to. Some are the suggested pressure versus the actual pressure, you can see when one changes the other changes everything's actually working there's no codes on this. Really for its age, 118,000 miles this thing is still shifting pretty good now.

A lot of times when you're just doing slow traffic it feels a little bit odd, well that's what happens to these things as they age they're much more critical at a lower speed because when you're going at a lower speed unfortunately these things are set up by computers to get the best gas mileage they possibly can. A really good test to this is which you can tell dollars, let's say you're going in low speeds and you go home in low speeds I would advise shifting to the manual so you'll start out you can see there's one won't change now because we're not moving but you haven't won and then once you get to a certain speed you can shift it up a little bit. We'll get on the road to show this even better if you find it has a problem with shifting now you can see we have it, one and it's manual so what you would do would be you're going up the hill and then you manually shift it to two.

You can see that didn't have any kind of hesitation whatsoever go to three again it's not hesitating. So if you do have one of these and you don't like the little Jiggles, do this, put it manual shift it manually which is rather hilarious because the owner here he used to do that with his Focus he had one of those horrible DCT dual clutch transmissions and he gave up with this thing shipped in itself and did it manually.

He just told me he drove it five years that way so rather than spend a fortune thousands and thousands replacing one of these CVTs, hey if you're not pretend it's a standard transmission whoop-dee-doo. It's really easy to do okay they're not the greatest transmissions in the world but this one gets good gas mileage it still runs pretty good it just sometimes gets a little jiggle at lower speeds. There are no codes yet and most of the data shows it's working perfectly fine on the other hand humans we can feel a lot more things than computers can because they only trip a code when there's a certain percentage and normally it's 20 to 25 percent plus or minus of normal data.

Well as humans we can feel three percent difference right so a little bit any jiggle but it's running good enough. Ah if it really bothers you put it in the manual mode like he did in his Focus for five years so I'm not in love with Nissan spot, you know he bought it a couple thousand miles ago it's really not a bad vehicle. It's not my choice of vehicle, but it runs good, it is fine to drive, it's got a lot of space and yes it does not have the variable compression engine because it's too old only the newer ones have that.

And that I mean if you think about it there's two things going wrong with it one it's a variable compression engine and two it's a three cylinder engine even less cylinders the smaller the amount of cylinders it's a fact the faster things will wear out this engine isn't worn out at all, it's not burning oil runs perfectly fine. You're looking for a used one like this if you're not a fanatic about jiggling shifting and it still goes as good as this but just remember before you buy one have a guy like me check it out because at least my machine will show there are no codes of any sort in the transmission now.

If it did have codes in the transmission and someone was thinking about buying it I would just say no look on to another car don't buy this one, but this one's still in pretty good condition so if you never want to miss another one of my new car repair video

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enrev up your engines today we got a Nissan Rogue it's got about 119 000 miles he's worried about the CVT transmission going out on it so we're gonna check it out he bought it only a few thousand miles ago you can see it's still in excellent shape the body and everything but he's taking care of the Interior the previous owners obviously did to some extent because it's not rip the torrent it's in good shape you can see it's got 118 000 miles on it as we look under the hood aside from the bird poop that came on this drive here it's actually a pretty good engine realize it wasn't until this year that they came out with a variable compression engine electronic hydraulic control to change the compression ratio by making the Piston going up really far or not as far to change the compression ratio really interesting technology pointed brakes this is a pretty Dependable engine now you might wonder why they went to the variable compression engine other than they have Engineers that designed it so they did they do get slightly better gas mileage but you're only talking about four or five percent better gas mileage and these get in the 30s anyway to have that level of technology and turning the owners into guinea pigs to see gee well these engines actually last over time this particular engine can last a long time the new ones the jury's still out do you want to be a guinea pig item still connected to a jackco CVT transmission and he feels that it's starting to wear off now there's somewhere in these that are normal that you live with some that are problems so the first thing we're going to do is hook up the giant scan tool and here we go we got the link up turn the main tool on we turn the key on so the idiot lights are on but it's not running and we'll do an intelligent diagnosis such a giant rollout wheel we'll do a full service diagnosis The Machine's doing its thing well we'll just kind of look around it it's got a nice black and chrome interior no it is a CVT transmission but you know it's got these fake gear shifts in it now some of these cvts have a problem where they won't go over 3000 RPM he's not having that problem yet so it's not gotten too bad we're gonna do a road test and everything but we're going to check all the data first we got a nice room in the back seat and it's a compact SUV but yes indeed the weakness of this vehicle is a CVT transmission pretty good engines 2.5 liter Nissan's are making 2.5 liter engines for a long time they have a good history they're decent engines but they're hooked up to that CVT transmission that I am not a fan of and you can see the computer system is a little slow we've only gone 49 and spent a few minutes from my experience the Nissan computer systems they're a bit laggard they're kind of slow a little bit backwards they could be updated a lot this car isn't at all this is a very high speed fancy scan tool too so it should really go a lot faster than it is so now we're going to look at the transmission system we're going to check everything but this is a four-wheel drive one so we'll start there now we'll see if there's any fault codes so select everything and it's as if they know these things I promise because it says there's no DTC but you might need further testing so we'll close the hood thank you for a spin back up turn turn any music off a little backup camera could be a little brighter but I mean you can see and the owner who's riding next to me said he hates that thing Ed it's kind of small now the computer's recording it all won't take it for a little spin it didn't have any codes but like I said like the machine itself said no detective trouble codes but further testing made me needed it's like it knows now this is a very odd transmission this is a two-speed CVT with overdrive they have so many different variants of these things it would make your head spin car itself right it's fine these are fun little cars to drive around it's the history of Nissan they've already made zoomy little cars that are fun to drive but their weak links have always been their front wheel drive transmissions especially the janco CVT he said he feels it being weird most at lower speed so we'll start out low and see see that's the weird thing is these are such odd Transmissions there's CVT transmissions so they don't have any gears but they call it a two-speed CVT with an overdrive so it acts like it's shifts gears even though there's no gears to shift now sometimes it confuses people with the way they run sometimes it doesn't well take it to a little drag strip and see what it does under load looking in the rear view mirror there's absolutely nobody behind us so we'll come to a stop and we'll see what it does under full acceleration here we go you notice it goes a lot higher see how it shifts higher but actually Force design is Shifting perfectly so far at least now the owner used to have an old Versa with a CVT and he admits it was much worse than this it was kind of like a motorboat going on a road if you can just feel it kind of slipping this is a better design they have gone forwards and it's not like it's slipping badly they just do have a tendency of rubbing a lot higher because that's the design of the vehicle to get acceleration out of it and that's why they added an overdrive to it so that it gets better gas mileage on a highway while still having decent acceleration most cars you'd think there's something wrong when you're going 45 and you step on the gas and it immediately goes this high but this thing was actually designed that way the machine doesn't lie it's recording all this data and we'll check it out when we get back I like one thing about this no auto shut off it's not turning the engine off hooray and I like the fact that it has an actual key all right we're back to square one stop the recording into the file name Nissan okay and here we go Auto playback if anything looks odd seven pages of information here now as you can see it's nice and green here and this is the slippage we're gonna see if there's any slippage now the graphs are easy to read so we can play it back fast with my finger you know it's a stage green the whole time which is good it's not getting into the red or anything and we'll watch one of these pressure sensors here do a combination of them and you can see they're all more or less following each other like they're supposed to some are the suggested pressure versus the actual pressure you can see when one changes the other changes everything's actually working there's no codes on this and really for its age 118 000 miles this thing is still shifting pretty good now he says a lot of times when you're just doing slow traffic it feels a little bit odd well that's what happens to these things as they age they're much more critical at a lower speed because when you're going at a lower speed unfortunately these things are set up by computers to get the best gas mileage they possibly can now a really good test to this is which you can tell dollars let's say you're going in low speeds and you go home in low speeds I would advise shifting to the manual so you'll start out you can see there's one won't change now because we're not moving but you haven't won and then once you get to a certain speed you can shift it up a little bit we'll get on the road to show this even better if you find it has a problem with shifting now you can see we have it one and it's manual so what you would do would be you're going up the hill and then you manually shift it to two you can see that didn't have any kind of hesitation whatsoever go to three again it's not hesitating so if you do have one of these and you don't like the little Jiggles do this put it manual shift it manually which is rather hilarious because the owner here he used to do that with his Focus he had one of those horrible DCT dual clutch transmissions and he gave up with this thing shipped in itself and did it manually and he drove at that for quite some time he just told me he drove it five years that way so rather than spend a fortune thousands and thousands replacing one of these cvts hey if you're not pretend it's a standard transmission whoop-dee-doo it's really easy to do okay they're not the greatest transmissions in the world but this one gets good gas mileage it still runs pretty good it just sometimes gets a little jiggle at lower speeds there are no codes yet and most of the data shows it's working perfectly fine on the other hand humans we can feel a lot more things than computers can because they only trip a code when there's a certain percentage and normally it's 20 to 25 percent plus or minus of normal data well as humans we can feel three percent difference right so a little bit any jiggle but it's running good enough ah if it really bothers you put it in the manual mode like he did in his Focus for five years so I'm not in love with Nissan spot you know he bought it a couple thousand miles ago it's really not a bad vehicle it's not my choice a vehicle but it runs good it is fine to drive it's got a lot of space it gets great gas mileage and yes it does not have the variable compression engine because it's too old only the newer ones have that and that I mean if you think about it there's two things going wrong with it one it's a variable compression engine and two it's a three cylinder engine even less cylinders the smaller the amount of cylinders it's a fact the faster things will wear out this engine isn't worn out at all it's not burning oil runs perfectly fine you're looking for a used one like this if you're not a fanatic about jiggling shifting and it still goes as good as this but just remember before you buy one have a guy like me check it out because at least my machine will show there are no codes of any sort in the transmission now if it did have codes in the transmission and someone was thinking about buying it I would just say no look on to another car don't buy this one but this one's still in pretty good change so if you never want to miss another one of my new car repair video\n"