I'm sorry to read about your CVT woes. We have 180k km on our 2008 but with the 5 speed and it runs like a champ. Did you try any of the tranny shops other than the dealer ?

 

Ugh, sorry to hear it.

I really hate those CVTs.:doh:

 

klingoff -
sorry to hear about your Pat.
Thanks for getting the Journey and good luck with it!

 

I'm sorry to hear your of your troubles. I have to admit that I'm amazed at how many people say that they can't find a shop that repairs the cvt, if you've seen inside one, they are very simple devices. I just hope that my Jeep stays under warrenty long enough for people to figure out how to fix them....

Look at how many new cars use CVTs as well, I'm not gonna list them all, but nissan, toyota, honda, ford, chrysler, lexus, mercedes, misubishi, subaru, suzuki, jeep, volvo, are the makes I can think of off the top of my head that use CVT's and they are becoming more and more common. I think in the next few years, the shops will have to learn to work on them or they will go out of buisness.

I think a smart paring would be a cvt with a turbo'd engine, and I don't know too many in that list.

anyways, Enjoy your new car!

 

Thanks, we thought about getting it fixed, however, when we took into account the money we had put into it this year and there were a couple of other things that were going to need to be fixed we decided it was in our best interest to get a new vehicle.

I realize that there are many vehicles that use the CVT and I believe Nissan offers a 10 Year 200K warranty on the CVT. The CVT was a very efficient and very smooth transmission but right now I just don't trust them. Perhaps in the future that may change.

The Journey is a nice vehicle... though not as good on gas. It is a bigger heavier vehicle so higher gas consumption was expected

 

Yea, sorry to hear about your tranny. I don't get why the dealers don't fix them. I remember the salesman telling me less parts in CVT, less chance of damage, longer lasting and less complicated to fix. I guess not.

Maybe they don't fix it and are sending them back to the Plant and having Engineers look at them to improve in the future models? Still new to Chrysler so they are probably evaluating every defective Tranny. Who knows.

 

Its Chrysler that won't fix the transmissions, Nisan et all do and will.

This is due to the contract Chrysler has with JATCO.
somewhere buried on Allpar is either the link to this or the actual article...basically Chrysler wouldn't commit to the CVT unless JATCO replaced any faulty ones...so Chrysler gets the new transmission (warranty work) free from JATCO and simply R&R's any transmission work.

After warranty you would be free to go to whoever you want...the local Nissan techs would have a full working knowledge of the transmission...the only thing they wouldn't have are the proprietary software inputs.

One of my sons works for the local Nissan dealer (big promotion and raise...just in time for Christmas, he's feeling pretty good right now) and he assures me that they work on multi branded CVTs and simply send them to the corresponding dealer for any software flashes, as those dealers do to them on a used Nissan they are repairing.

 

Ford Taurus X's had a CVT style transmission, and it is the same story with those. It's not that dealers are unwilling to repair them, it's that Ford or Chrysler simply doesn't provide parts to do so. The Ford tech I spoke with when I was considering (very briefly) the Taurus X said they are basically a replacement item; Ford did not provide parts or any service information. I expect the Chry-Jeep CVT is the same way.

 

Not to sound like a jerk but, did you change the fluid at said intervals in the manual?

My company uses patriots for service and sales vehicles. So far none of them have had this issue and we've got 3 2008 models, 2 2009, and 3 2011-12 models. The oldest ones have had their fluid changed at 60,000 miles as specified in then manual, so far my pat (2008 with 130,000 miles) has had zero issues with it so far. The only problem with mine is a noisy bearing in one of the pulleys.

I was always told Chrysler transmissions are terrible for reliability so, as long as the PM stuff is taken care of, I figure failures should not pop up.