Post by
amc49 »
https://forums.nicoclub.com/amc49-u275146.html
Wed Nov 07, 2018 6:05 pm
The belts have always been steel, the normal rubber type used in industrial CVT transmissions will not hold up in the normal oil temperatures found in a hydraulic transmission. Although the belts appear to tear up quickly, it is the rest of the unit tearing up that spits the belt into 10,000 pieces as they are simply put together by trapping pieces all together in a couple of steel bands like the most intricate puzzle made on earth. The trans pulleys have to remain dead steady to keep the belt together and not doing that is what lets the belt come apart. Most commonly one set of pulleys fails a support bearing to let the pulley set flop around, the belt is doomed once that happens. Or the belt loses the tooth grab to the pulleys, then the constant ratio ramping up and down begins when the ECM/TCM cannot decide what 'gear' the trans is truly in due to slipping. Then the sudden impact hits when the belt does try to grab erratically tend to break the belt as well.
They get better but only by small amounts, no one thing has changed the life drastically. Part of the issue is technology related, CVTs require around 800 psi of pressure to hold the pulleys together reliably, before that most ATX used up to maybe 250 psi max and that was only in reverse. The pressure increase is really hard on the bearings that hold the pulleys in place and it shows, they shell out quick.
Nissan's place in that issue is that now they are the poor stepchild of Japanese cars, they do not want to spend money hardening parts any more than needed to just get by whereas others (Honda, Toyota) that do CVT have gone further than that to make things better. The Nissan viewpoint as to car lifetimes and longterm durability has changed since the company went to Renault, and what Renault does to any company they take over. They tend to cheapen the company vastly as compared to what they were before, and don't really worry about how well the product is doing say 5 years later.