rev up your engines, believe it or not, it's snowing in Houston,
since I can't work outside now, I'm just going to talk about CVT transmissions,
now many modern cars come with CVT transmissions, it stands for, continuously variable transmissions,
they don't have gears like a normal transmission, they don't shift from first gear, second gear,
third gear, now to understand CVT transmissions,
here's a little history on transmissions in general,
now the first widely accepted transmissions in vehicles were standard transmissions,
with a standard shifter, and a clutch that you push down with your foot,
they were extremely reliable, you shifted it when you need to with your hand,
but they have one drawback, they are a pain to drive in traffic,
and then came automatic transmissions that were still geared transmissions,
but they shifted themselves automatically, which of course people in the city love,
because then they don't have to think about shifting,
they just step on the gas or the brake, it makes driving a lot easier,
now for a long time, the standard transmissions had more power, and got better gas mileage
than the automatics, but as time went on, the automatic transmissions
got more sophisticated and more complex, and more computer controlled, so that they would
get just about the same gas mileage as a standard transmission,
but that wasn't enough, with pressure from the EPA to get better and better gas mileage
from manufacturers, especially in the United States, they started making these CVT transmissions,
because they get about 6 percent or so better gas mileage than the normal automatic geared
transmissions, as you can see in this diagram, there's a
gear shift that allows you to manually change it from first, to second, to third, to fourth
gear, and there's actual gears that you shift into
by yourself, while in this diagram of an automatic transmission,
although it's a very basic one, the transmission automatically shifts itself using various
types of devices to send power to the wheels, while in this CVT diagram, you can see that
there are no real gears, it uses metal belts and various shaped drums,
in order to make the car run most efficiently, they have a lot less moving parts than any
modern automatic transmission and they get the best gas mileage for whatever speed your
going that you can possibly get, and decades and decades ago,
my grandfather who was also a mechanic, worked on CVT transmissions, but they didn't work
all that well back then, the garage was down at the bottom of a big
hill, and when he worked on these CVT transmissions,
a lot of times they just would not go up the hill,
they would slip so badly that they had to go around to flatter ground to get up, they
wouldn't make it up the hill, now metallurgy has gone a long way since then,
so the modern CVT transmissions, they'll go up the hills and stuff, but a lot of them
have a lot of lag, which many people refer to as a rubber band
effect, you step on the gas and it's like winding
up a rubber band, it doesn't go, it doesn't go, and then it
starts going, but your going to find with many modern cars
like this Nissan, they come only with CVT transmissions,
so what is there for you to do? because the CVT transmissions are cheaper
to manufacture, and get better gas mileage, your going to be seeing more and more of them
as time goes on, so if your going to get a CVT transmission,
listen to this warning, do some serious research on the models your
thinking about buying, for example, I have never yet seen a Toyota Corolla CVT
transmission go bad, not a single one yet, but I personally have seen dozens of Nissan
CVT transmissions go bad, especially in the Altimas, and when the Altimas went bad, it
was either spend $3,500 to $4,500 having them rebuild,
or buying a factory re-manufactured unit and spending $5,000 to $6,000 to have it replaced,
so in this case, if you don't mind the way the CVT's drive,
you would definitely get a Toyota Corolla and you would pass on a Nissan Altima, now
since CVT transmissions are being mass produced now, more than they ever have been,
I'm assuming in the future they will probably perfect all the problems like they did with
automatic transmissions, but me, I'm going to stick with my four speed
automatic transmission that's in this Toyota, it's got 240,000 miles on it, and it's never
been touched and it still shifts like a dream, more quick fixes on the Scotty Kilmer Channel,
so if you never want to miss another one of my new car repair videos, remember to ring
that bell!