[Tchron]

can someone tell me if they see anything wrong with this Cvt transmission?

 

[Wolf]

I am not a mechanic, so I can't tell. But, I know that the Mitsubishi transmissions are complete garbage. My wife bought a 2014 Outlander and I liked it, so when I was ready for a new car, I bought a 2015 Sport. Loved it, until I reached 116K and the transmission went. Prior to that, I had already put a down payment on a Bronco Sport. Shortly thereafter, things started happening. Warning lights started going off. Brought it to our mechanic and he said that it was the transmission. It needed to be replaced. There was a recall, but my VIN wasn't included in the recall. We knew we wouldn't get anything on a trade, so we donated it to our local vocational school and told them the problem, but they were excited, because they usually don't get newer vehicles. So, while my Bronco was on order, my wife got a new car and I drove her Outlander. This past week, at 15, 700 miles, I started getting the warning lights. ABS service required, ASC service required, AWD service required, and 4WD is overheating, slow down. With all those warnings, it is probably a sensor. We bought the Mitsubishi's, because they were affordable and we have twin daughters and were looking at buying 2 cars at the same time for them. Before all this happened, we were thinking about buying a couple of Sports for them. Glad we bought them Subarus. We had a Subaru before and put 230K on it, with no problems. I would never buy another Mitsubishi or recommend any of my family or friends to buy one. The school will probably get another one to work on.

 

[chanche]

CVTs in general get a bad rap for being trash or unreliable. You can get 200k+ out of a CVT, you just cannot drive it like a regular automatic. The driven pulley that rotates the output shaft of the transmission is driven by steel on steel contact on angled slick surfaces, which is brutal on the components and creates high heat. This is not like having gears/teeth engaging to transfer torque. CVT steel belts have no tensioner, the tension is all created by the variators. You need to gently accelerate CVT's, you cannot just mash the throttle they will not last. If you drive a CVT easy, calmly, avoid jerky applications of torque it will cause much less wear on the belt and variators. This will also keep the fluid from cooking which is probably the number 1 killer of the CVT. When the oil gets to hot and cooks the viscosity changes greatly, film strength is lowered. CVT fluid should be swapped out every 15-30k miles according to the CVT manufacturer, the auto manufactures who DO NOT make the transmissions will tell you its a lifetime fluid, this is objectively incorrect.

If you got ABS, ASC, AWD errors all at the same time it sounds like maybe you have some comms issues with a component or a wire is cracked or something causing the bus network to fail. Subarus with CVTs have the same failures as nissans, fords, mitsubishis etc... Toyota's like the prius have a completely different type of CVT using 2 electric motors which dont really fail. The next gen CVT's are on the horizon and it looks like to alleviate most of all the wear and heat on the CVT they are going to use a real 1st gear then dual variators for the rest of the 'gear range'.

I think in general most people just drive to aggressively, accellerate to quickly, brake to late, lack proportional throttle control etc...

 

[Pjfrench]

So would you tow an 1100kg poptop caravan with one?

 

[Tchron]

So my problems here still is that before opening up the trans I couldn’t move at all when going into drive or reverse. It would sputter like something was clogged then go into limp mode (limp mode=no acceleration at all). I changed the front trans sensor and the back one. That didn’t change anything at all. That’s why I was wondering if anyone seen anything wrong, I never opened up the belt side. Maybe something is messed up in there?

 

[James2013]

CVTs in general get a bad rap for being trash or unreliable. You can get 200k+ out of a CVT, you just cannot drive it like a regular automatic. The driven pulley that rotates the output shaft of the transmission is driven by steel on steel contact on angled slick surfaces, which is brutal on the components and creates high heat. This is not like having gears/teeth engaging to transfer torque. CVT steel belts have no tensioner, the tension is all created by the variators. You need to gently accelerate CVT's, you cannot just mash the throttle they will not last. If you drive a CVT easy, calmly, avoid jerky applications of torque it will cause much less wear on the belt and variators. This will also keep the fluid from cooking which is probably the number 1 killer of the CVT. When the oil gets to hot and cooks the viscosity changes greatly, film strength is lowered. CVT fluid should be swapped out every 15-30k miles according to the CVT manufacturer, the auto manufactures who DO NOT make the transmissions will tell you its a lifetime fluid, this is objectively incorrect.

If you got ABS, ASC, AWD errors all at the same time it sounds like maybe you have some comms issues with a component or a wire is cracked or something causing the bus network to fail. Subarus with CVTs have the same failures as nissans, fords, mitsubishis etc... Toyota's like the prius have a completely different type of CVT using 2 electric motors which dont really fail. The next gen CVT's are on the horizon and it looks like to alleviate most of all the wear and heat on the CVT they are going to use a real 1st gear then dual variators for the rest of the 'gear range'.

I think in general most people just drive to aggressively, accellerate to quickly, brake to late, lack proportional throttle control etc...

Thanks for this. This is my first Mitsubishi..(and CVT trans for that matter). It took a few months for me to get used to it, and like you said, I drive it real easy, especially from stops. After reading all the horror stories about CVT's I was worried but there are plenty of cars out there with over 200k on a CVT, you just hear about the horror stories. And definitely change the fluid (with J4) every 30-40k. I'm doing a tranny service tomorrow as a matter of fact, with BOTH filters!