Are Subaru CVT Transmissions Reliable or Unreliable?

credit trades here and today i'm going to be talking about the reliability of the cvt transmission specifically for subaru and i'm going to touch on a couple other brands as well and if i think they're reliable or not and if i recommend getting a manual transmission over the cvt and which one might be better for you to pick now let me start this with the original cvt that caused all of the problems with the reliability concerns and that's the nissan cvt they were known to have complete transmission failures with their cvts and it was a very common problem with those vehicles and it kind of scared a lot of consumers away from the cvt transmission when they were looking up things about cvts they kept seeing these massive amounts of people who are having total transmission failures and replacements early on in the lifespan of the vehicle a lot of them were under 100 000 miles and some were having even multiple cvts that were failing after they replaced them already and what this did was it kind of tarnished the cvt's reputation and it really has stuck with the cvt for a long time and it still has the stigma around it as well today and i'm here to tell you about why that is in the past and also that is specifically with nissan a lot of the other makers subaru honda and toyota i know make some very good cvt transmissions they're very reliable and there are a few different things that you need to look out for because the subaru one specifically does have a little problem and the problem is a specific solenoid in the valve body of the cvt it's known to prematurely fail if you're experiencing these solenoid issues what will happen is you'll get a lot of dash lights and you'll get some codes thrown up and you'll need to take it to the dealer for them to figure out what's wrong and the culprit is is it's a solenoid in the valve body and the fix for it is to replace the valve body itself now this may seem like a pretty big issue but it really isn't and here's why so subaru has covered the cvt problems any problems not just the valve body but any cvt problems up to 10 years or 100 000 miles and if you actually contact subaru of america they've been known to cover and i've seen a lot of cases of this where they cover up to 150 000 miles and unlimited mileage through the pisa warranty and i've seen a lot of people get their valve bodies replaced for free up to 150 000 miles or even more than that so if you are having issues with your valve body take it to the dealer let them figure out what it is and then call subaru of america they're gonna at least at minimum give you a percentage back on the price i've heard people getting a thousand dollars back on a 1200 repair and replacement for the valve body and now if you're comparing this to a manual transmission the valve body seems to go out between 100 and 150 000 give or take obviously there's going to be some that go less than that so i'm going to go over that if you compare that to a manual transmission with a clutch a clutch is almost exactly the same price as the valve body it's going to be 12 1500 2 000 to get a clutch a new clutch on a manual transmission subaru and that's exactly the same price or it might even be a little bit cheaper to get a new valve body installed and the other thing about the valve body is it sits up on top of the transmission on the impreza and the crosstrek and you can actually replace it yourself fairly easily because it does sit up on top of the engine you don't need to take the whole transmission out to do that service so if you're looking at the reliability compared to a manual a manual and a cvt will have a pretty similar repair bill at the same price the only big difference is is that with the cvt subaru covers it if you're under 150 000 miles and so if you look at them that way there really isn't much difference in reliability in terms of the manual versus the cvt and total transmission failures for the cvt and the manual are actually extremely rare it's almost always the valve body and the problems with the manual is that the clutch wears out which is just a wear item so if you're looking at in terms of reliability they're very similar in terms of reliability so i don't think you can go wrong with either one i will say though the subaru cvt has really impressed me a lot i was a little skeptical at first especially hearing about cvt issues and the cvt for a daily driver is probably the best transmission out there i prefer it over any automatic transmission i've ever used of course it's going to be less fun less engaging than a manual for a daily driver that you're not racing or anything it's a really awesome transmission it's super smooth it gives you the power when you need it it can sit at peak horsepower so again i really like the subaru cvt there are some known issues that again mostly are covered by subaru or that aren't much different in price than a clutch swap on a manual so if you hear about the cvt being a really unreliable transmission it simply isn't true if you're talking about the subaru honda toyota cvts they're very good transmissions and i've had mine 115 000 miles it's 10 years old i haven't changed the fluid once i haven't had any issues with it i've heard of people going 250 000 before they have valve body issues there's a few people who have gone up to 500 000 and i think there's somebody who even hit a million miles on one of these cars so they're not they're not unreliable like a lot of people say they are

Channel: Kurt of Trades

Views: 70,049

Keywords: Kurt of trades, kurt, subaru, cvt, nissan, reliable, reliability, unreliable, valve body, continuously variable, transmission, warranty

Id: w6H7aDLQOwM

Length: 5min 5sec (305 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 12 2022