2008 Sentra CVT Problems

[Nicotine]

Hi guys, I'm new to Nico as I'm mainly a BMW guy. I do have a soft spot for Nissan as one of my very good friends has a 240 rally car, that I have helped out with.

My fiancee's drives a 2008 Sentra SE with the 2.0l, up to this point it has been problem free and a wonderful car. I think that this has been an underlying issue for a while as it has acted up before, but then returned to normal. This September I was driving the car in the rain doing around 60mph when the rpm's started to climb and the car seemed to be loosing power. It was taching 4.5K to maintain 60 on a flat which is not normal at all and when I noticed a faint hot ATF smell I pulled over right away then called my friend Flatblackian, and he said to shut it off, restart it, and see if it goes back to normal. It did.

Now about a week ago my Fiancee was on her way to work (it was -20 in Duluth MN) and the car was "chugging" when she went to leave. I told her to just let it warm up for a while longer and then try again. That's what she did, and it went back to normal. However it did throw a service engine soon light, which cleared itself before I was able to read the codes.

Then today she was on her way home from her parents and she stopped to get a car wash. After the car wash she was back on the road she had to slow down for a stop light and when she went to accelerate it would only go up to 20mph and then the rpms kept going up, so she pulled into a parking lot and shut it off. When she restarted it and put it into reverse and it was "sloppy/clunky" and she put it in drive and it went, but it wasn't quite right. When she went to slow down it felt like it didn't want to stop. Then she accelerated up to about 30 and did the same thing but the O/D off light started flashing, she tried stopping and shutting the car off a couple times and restarting it but it didn't help the final time she tried to accelerate it got up to about 20 and the rpm's were jumping from 3 to 5k. She said the car smelt funny, and this is when she called AAA. They towed the car to the dealer. It was 4p.m. when she got to the dealer with her car, they closed at 6p.m. They wouldn't give her a loaner car, and promised that they would look at it. Apparently the service department took off early today so I will have to wait till tomorrow. I don't get why they wouldn't give a loaner car, plus they said it would be $110 just to take a look...

What do you guys think? I know the CVT has an extended warranty but I haven't ever dealt with Nissan.

Thanks, Andrew

[Faja]

On the bright side, if it is some sort of transmission problem at least it should be covered under the new extended warranty and from your description it very much sounds like there's something wrong with the transmission.

[06_blkout]

I'm pretty sure Nissan will replace the transmission if it's under 100k miles. I've had this problem with cars when I was at Nissan, but the part inside the CVT that causes this, I can't remember the name of CVT's are non-serviceable, so you'll more than likely get a new transmission out of the deal

Also, welcome to Nico!

[Craig O]

Had same problem with my 2009 Rogue. When I brought my car to the dealership they were aware of this and without hesitation said that the transmission was not repairable and that it would be replaced with a new one at no charge. They did so and 8 months later I have not had a problem.