CVT vs. 6-speed manual

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nissangirl74
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I'll be the first to admit that when I first saw the Cube, I did not like it. When Greg told me he was thinking about buying one, I seriously thought about taking him to have an MRI. Considering everything he owned was either over 30 years old, or boosted, I wondered what the appeal was. Simple. He wanted a simple car for his commute. First requirement on the list...an automatic tranny. Another oddity because we both prefer manuals.

Anyway, to make a long story short, Greg buys the car. I am a bit disappointed at the lack of power during take-off but other than that, it's OK. I always like to do comparisons though, so I asked the dealer to let us know whenever a manual arrived so I could test drive it and see for myself the difference.

Apparently the manual models are few and far between because I didn't get to drive one until last week. But it was worth the wait. What a difference the manual makes!!!!! OK, to be truthful, first gear is still slower than two turtles racing in the mud, but at least when you are manually changing gears you feel like you are getting somewhere.

First gear - 4,000 rpm - 25 mphSecond gear - 4,000 rpm - 35 mphThird gear - 4,000 rpm - 45 mph

However, after you climb out of third, the higher gears hold a LOT of promise. It would be very easy to get a speeding ticket on the interstate in this thing. It shifts remarkably smooth, the gears are close together, the car in itself handles well, and you never feel like you are going as fast as you are.

This car will NEVER be a 10 second car...even with boost. It's just not gonna happen. The model I drove (the 1.8) is as base as you can get. It had power windows and door locks, tilt steering and A/C, and that's about it as far as the amenities go. It didn't even have an armrest! However, with the manual transmission, I would daily drive this car til it fell apart. Especially if it was also lowered and had wider tires. With a few simple mods and the manual tranny, you can have a car that is fun to drive AND gets some attention!

If anyone is in the market but still riding the fence on which model to buy, my suggestion is to go test drive every one of them. (There are 4.) I've driven 3 of the 4 and they had some drastic differences so you need to be sure.


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kerrton
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Also the manual should get much better long term reliability than the CVT, and if something does go wrong it will be MUCH cheaper to fix or replace. If the CVT goes, you can't even fix it, all you can do is replace it with a new unit that will cost no less than $4000, probably closer to 5. Go for the 6 speed manual, more practical AND it sounds like it's more fun too. Just my opinion......

jodiaz13
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kerrton wrote:Also the manual should get much better long term reliability than the CVT, and if something does go wrong it will be MUCH cheaper to fix or replace. If the CVT goes, you can't even fix it, all you can do is replace it with a new unit that will cost no less than $4000, probably closer to 5. Go for the 6 speed manual, more practical AND it sounds like it's more fun too. Just my opinion......
My transmission mechanic friend likes the CVTs. According to him they have fewer parts than traditional automatics. No matter I keep seeing posts suggesting the CVT will be a reliability issue. As an engineer, and real car buff, I am interested in what data suggests a looming problem? Not to mention that I have owned 4 Nissans (1981 Maxima to present...)and not one ever had a tranny problem. Part of why I bought the Nissan CVT instead of a 2WD Jeep with its CVT.

miata007
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Nissan has refined the CVT for 2 to 3 generations already so definately things have improved on reliability front. But it is still relatively new compare to AT/manual so may consider getting longer power train info on the CVT.

007


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kerrton
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There have been a lot of 2008 Rogue's with CVT's requiring replacement, mine included, and a few even having the CVT changed out more than once, at between 5 and 6 thousand dollar cost to the manufacturer each time. Also, there are a lot of unhappy Altima owners from around the same 2008 model year. There haven't been any cases of failures, just grinding and rattling and some performance loss. Also, the old 2003 Murano CVT was terrible for reliablity, just check out that forum to see a lot of really angry people, many who are off warranty.

It is impossible to say what the failure rate is because we don't have a solid, random sample of owners or exact numbers from Nissan. I'm very happy with my new 09 CVT which is running great, so I suspect it's just a small short term "bad batch" but overall the CVT should be reliable for several hundred thousand miles.

I started a "high mileage CVT" thread on most of the forums here to get some good news cases of high mileage reliable CVT's. I've gotten many reports of 100,000 plus miles on various CVT's, and a few over 200,000 but not many yet. Of course this is mainly because these are still relatively new, for me it would take over a decade to come close to 200,000!!!! Actually the Versa forum had some of the highest miles recorded, followed by the Murano and then a few Rogues.
Modified by kerrton at 10:21 AM 9/4/2009

Square1
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Before I bought my Cube I did a ton of research on the CVT transmission, not Nissan specific, but the CVT in general.

The CVT in concept is awesome and has had limited use for many years in things other than automobiles. A lot of lawn tractors have been using them for years like our Scotts (John Deere). They've also been in use a long time in industrial equipment such as fork lifts, recreation (ATV's, Snowmobiles, etc.).

The problem has and still is relibility for automotive use, simply because of how cars / trucks are driven. In small form (like a lawn tractor, ATV, etc.) they seem to work well and hold up for a long time, probably because there is a small amount of torque and not a lot of stop and go. The same appeaers to be true for industrial use as well where all the components are super heavy duty. These would probably hold up well in an automobile but they're just to huge and heavy.

So for use in a car they have to be scaled down from what industry uses, and it appears that this scaled down version is giving manufactures fits with regard to longivity and cost. So far, they're just not up to the task of day to day normal driving conditions. I'll bet if there were some way of knowing, we would probably find out that the ones with a good reliability record are from car's that are driven very consistantly. Like for someone who drives the same route daily without a lot of stop and go, it seems it's torque that's killing them.

I also read that the Nissan CVT has undergone some significant changes, and the new CVT's will be better at handling torque and more reliable for day to day automotive use. But this new CVT isn't supposed to be out till some time later this year, and the new version will be targeted for the larger cars first then migrate to the Versa and Cube. So the Cube and Versa at this time, still has the same CVT as it's did last year (maybe some minor improvements).

One of the biggest problems is that the CVT (or Jatco) is so new, the dealership techs don't have the trainig to work on them. And even if they did, no one has the special tools required, neither do independant transmission specialty shops.

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Touge-Z32
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Before I bought my wife her cube I did my home work researching like crazy. The Cube is the 3 generation of the Xtronic CVT as the previous generation's in Japan had flaws from 1998 to 2007. The last major recall was in 2005-2006 for a weakened belt with 70,000 recalled for all 6 models of that year. Nissan had over 10 years to prefect the transmission which will replace all automatics to come as the benefits outweighs the disadvantages. Right now many mechanics do not have the equipment to fix it but it will change just as carb to EFI and smog regulating will soon be all over the US. Even though things will change manuals are going to stay for drivers who want control as it's human.

CVT vs with out CVThttp://auto.howstuffworks.com/cvt5.htm

The internal of Xtronic CVThttp://www.nissan-global.com/E...S/CVT/

Japan Recallshttp://dogandlemon.com/site/ja...=CUBE

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kerrton
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I agree, the current CVT designs by Jatco are very reliable for long term uses. All you have to do is look at the failure numbers and you'll immediately see that they EXCEED reliablity of most conventional automatic transmissions.

Have you ever noticed that Ford, Chrysler and GM dealers have full time transmission tech's, while this is not the case with Nissan? It's because the conventional auto's from these manufacturers fail at a very high rate. Granted, the good news is that they are serviceable, but not so great for those who have their's serviced under warranty, which means you have a new vehicle with a repaired tranny that may not be as good as new. Anyway, the facts are that the Big 3 in particular have high failure rates for conventional tranny's, but you don't hear anyone suggesting that "conventional tranny's are a bad design, unreliable and should be avoided and replaced with a more reliable design". Of course not, because they've been around forever and we don't question it, even though failure rates are relatively high. Then along comes the CVT, with some failures initially and some longer term failures (ex. 50,000 miles etc) but still the failure rate is significantly lower than that of conventional tranny's, but because it's relatively new technology people start to say "I've noticed some failures, therefore we should abandon/avoid this technology". This is not logical thinking, all components from all manufacturers have a certain failure rate, and the current CVT failure rate is very low and outperforms conventionals from Big 3 manufacturers. Even Toyota has lots of tranny failures, I was unable to find the exact numbers but I have a friend who got the RAV4 with the new 6-speed auto and the tranny has been replaced 2 times already and he's still not sure if it's running right!! My point is that even Toyotas have bad tranny's!! Of course we all know that first generation CVT sucked and had high failure rates, but that is simply not true of the current generation CVT. I'm not biased either way, and don't particularly love my Rogue CVT, it's not bad, but my point is that we need to be fair and hold all to the same standards.

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Touge-Z32
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that is what I was trying to say but what is really funny is that the first real CVT designed by Leonardo da Vinci. That's a cool fact for 1000.

http://www.howstuffworks.com/f...3.htm

smac103
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very well put kerrton,

i think it is a natural tendency to be wary of all new technologies, but if you look at the overall reliability of the CVT's in all of the nissans that have been sold since they started the CVT's. it's quite extraordinary how well they have done with these. after all, they wouldnt put them in almost across the board on their new models if the accountants said it would eat them alive in warranty costs.

the CVT's are advancing in technology and reliability much faster than most other major automotive advances have. fuel injection for example... anybody tried dealing with an old late fifties "fuelie" corvette? took nearly thirty years to make fuel injection reliable. it took longer than it should have, because owners, and mechanics alike, were afraid of it and refused to embrace it.

miata007
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Kerrton,It is not valid to compare to failure rate of the big 3 because overall, the big 3 powertrains are less reliable for a # of year already. Instead, I would like to compare directly with Nissan AT.

I don't know if we can obtain such info. If you ask me to place a bet, I will lean (like) towards the traditional AT over the CVT. But that's just my view and don't have solid/real world data to back up. I am expecting all the bugs have been worked out on the traditional AT/manual.

007


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