Bucking (rubber banding?) in my 08 Rogue FWD

[commanderclif]

Hello!
Last week my 08 Rogue (107K miles) started a new issue. A random times between 20 and 40 mph while applying consistent acceleration, the vehicle will briefly pitch forward slightly and then buck forward. Not as forceful as a bucking horse but it's a noticeable motion of slight deceleration followed by a kick forward. Might be described as a lurch but having gone through looking for posts about this, the term rubber banding sounded kind of close. Since my vehicle isn't an AWD I have no transfer case to hope that that would be the magic fix.

It seemed to occur more when it was a little warmer outside and driving aggressively seemed to make the issue happen with more frequency. Gentle driving I've been able to do 10 - 20 miles with not one instance.

About a month ago low speed accelerations were often causing a side to side shimmy/shake of the whole vehicle and I put a bottle of fuel injector cleaner in the tank which seems to have helped a bit but between that and this new concern, got me wondering about fuel related fixes I could look at.

The CVT fluid was changed about a year ago at the dealer.
At that time I had been dealing with quite a bit of whine coming from the transmission that disappeared as soon as I had new fluid in there.

[bill875]

Sounds like your CVT is going. How long ago did you buy it? Are you still within the 10 Year/120,000 Mi. warranty period for the CVT? If so, get your car to a Nissan Dealer ASAP. I first noticed trouble when backing up in Reverse. Mine would buck like a rubber band effect and with enough gas, it would move, but I had no idea it was the CVT, I figured it was a loose rubber boot or something that was getting in the way of an axle spinning. Why that would happen only in reverse, I have no idea, but I was glad I still had just a matter of a few days remaining on my warranty to get it replaced for free.

[commanderclif]

Didn't see your reply here bill just now....where I"m reading it from my local Nissan dealer while they are looking at it. The reverse thing you mentioned sounds familiar from awhile back but I only experienced that twice. A new thing that happened yesterday for the first time was I was sitting at a traffic light, foot on the brake and felt a very subtle buck. So subtle thought I imagined it but it did it again 20 seconds later. Didn't get that today coming here but waiting to hear what they say!

Regarding warranty. Get this. I guess I hit my 10 years this past April and I'm at 104,700 miles. My service advisor here has given me a phone number for Nissan's Customer Goodwill Department as they might be able to extend or do something for me if they do come back from inspection and say the transmission is going bad.

I'm waiting.......

[commanderclif]

Thought I would come back and give a final update on this. Nissan said NO to a transmission replacement so continued driving the car around for another month till one day it got really bad all of a sudden and for the first time, a check engine light came on. I plugged in a computer reader and it said one of the ignition coils were bad.

Bought a replacement ignition coil at AutoZone for like $60 and what do you know, the problem went away completely. That was a bit of cheaper replacement then a whole new transmission!

[casperfun]

Thanks 4 the update.

Good to know.

Beautiful ending considering.