Are CVT transmissions still a joke?

[heebeegeetee]

Hi all, a rather non PH question if I may?

I've been a very happy owner of a Nissan X-Trail, a 2008 T31 model. Bought it 8 years ago for towing duties as I had a garage business then (now retired), bought it for not a lot with 113k miles on the clock, it's now on 172k miles and running fine. It's just taken us down to Devon, 200 miles each way, loaded up for a weekend away and for marshalling duties on the Lands End Trial, whereupon it got very muddy as usual, but has cleaned up nicely both in and out as it always has. Myself a couple of mates have been doing some marshalling on trials and stage rallies, and the X-Trail has been bloody great. Cruises nicely to and from (not great on the twisties in Wales though )

However it's an auto, a good old traditional slush drive job, and I do like an auto for mundane driving duties. I want to buy a younger X-Trail, poss post 2017 facelift, but all the autos are CVT. The likeliest alternative to X-Trail is RAV4, but they're CVT too (I'm aware the latest are now trick emotor-no-belts-type but they're too new).

Does anyone have any experience of CVT transmissions of late? Are they still absolutely sh*t, they have terrible reputations, not undeservedly, even the Japanese have struggled to make them reliable.
I could go manual of course, which I would find frustrating, and as I like to keep cars a long time I'd probably be into a clutch and DMF replacement once in it's life, but CVT transmission failure writes a car off, I would imagine.

Any thoughts or advice guys? All replies greatly appreciated.

[5s Alive]

heebeegeetee said:

Hi all, a rather non PH question if I may?

I've been a very happy owner of a Nissan X-Trail, a 2008 T31 model. Bought it 8 years ago for towing duties as I had a garage business then (now retired), bought it for not a lot with 113k miles on the clock, it's now on 172k miles and running fine. It's just taken us down to Devon, 200 miles each way, loaded up for a weekend away and for marshalling duties on the Lands End Trial, whereupon it got very muddy as usual, but has cleaned up nicely both in and out as it always has. Myself a couple of mates have been doing some marshalling on trials and stage rallies, and the X-Trail has been bloody great. Cruises nicely to and from (not great on the twisties in Wales though )

However it's an auto, a good old traditional slush drive job, and I do like an auto for mundane driving duties. I want to buy a younger X-Trail, poss post 2017 facelift, but all the autos are CVT. The likeliest alternative to X-Trail is RAV4, but they're CVT too (I'm aware the latest are now trick emotor-no-belts-type but they're too new).

Does anyone have any experience of CVT transmissions of late? Are they still absolutely sh*t, they have terrible reputations, not undeservedly, even the Japanese have struggled to make them reliable.
I could go manual of course, which I would find frustrating, and as I like to keep cars a long time I'd probably be into a clutch and DMF replacement once in it's life, but CVT transmission failure writes a car off, I would imagine.

Any thoughts or advice guys? All replies greatly appreciated.

I'd go with the Toyota. The planetary gearset hybrid transaxles are bomb proof and could hardly be described as new. There are some variants that use a standard CVT to get the car off the mark and then seamlessly change over to the planetary gearset but the RAV isn't one of them. The later RAV also has Toyota's "Dynamic Force" engine. This has both direct and indirect injection therefore negating the DI problem of inlet valve carbon build-up .

Our Prius was driven hard for 12 years without a single issue. Often fully loaded, and several times to the south of France - we didn't hang about either and averaged over 60mpg. I replaced the transmission fluid at 30K out of interest and I couldn't see the difference between the old and the new - unlike our Kona EV's reduction gear which was full of swarf at less than 5K. Official fluid change for the Prius was between 90-120K depending on region. Also changed the Iridium plugs at 80K and they looked like new.

Belt drive CVTs are torque limited with very little headroom in most applications and hard use is not advised. Certainly put me off buying the Subaru XV which I really liked otherwise.