Nissan Mirca CVT transmission good reliability?

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Fri 27 Jan 2017 13:19
Nissan Mirca CVT transmission good reliability? - fv43576

I am help my daughter to find her very first car for cheap to running and to insure. Her licence is for automatic only, she is really like the Nissan Mirca 2002 1.0 CVT with 63,000 owned by elderly lady with excellent full service history. But when I hear the word CVT sound very complications, I went search on Google to see how it works, when I see a picture of the chain/rubber belt inside the transmission do this required to replace like the timing belt? or leaving forever? How good is this? should I avoid this car? Her other car is on the list are Vauxhall Corsa 1.0 easytronic transmission and Fiat Punto 1.2 speedgear are this both same as CVT??

Helpful reply is appreciate

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Fri 27 Jan 2017 13:43
Nissan Mirca CVT transmission good reliability? - skidpan

If there is no medical reason for her automatic only licence I suggest she retakes her test in a manual. She will then have a much wider choice of much nicer to drive cars that are not saddled with most horrid CVT boxes.

Whilst I do not like auto's if an auto is essential Kia's and Hyundais used old style torque converter boxes and in some cases still do. Still horrid in a small car but probably more reliable.

Any 15 year old car is probably going to be a money pit. A faulty auto transmission will probably write off the car. Manual garboxes can still fail but even the village idiot could cahge one.

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Fri 27 Jan 2017 14:59
Nissan Mirca CVT transmission good reliability? - SLO76
The K11 Micra was an excellent little car with one glaring weakness in the range and that was the CVT gearbox.

We used to stock a large range of small to medium automatics which appealed to older buyers who were generally easy to deal with and the cars themselves were usually very low in the miles and in excellent condition so required little prep work.

However we stopped buying in CVT K11's because of the number of faults and outright failures we were seeing which was a shame because the rest of the car was outstanding compared to most rivals reliability wise.

A 15yr old K11 is also likely to be heavily corroded as they were never the best at resisting rot with front cross-members and sills known weak points. Buy only if dirt cheap (less than £700) and has a good Mot with the view that you'll bin it if anything major goes wrong.

Remember also that these were poor performers in crash tests and structural rot will have deteriorated this further.

The Punto and Corsa are poor options also and again should only be bought as bargain buckets with a view that you'll run it till it drops and hope to get lucky.

Limiting herself to auto only will cost a fortune over the years with increased fuel consumption in general and by limiting choice when buying a car.

Edited by SLO76 on 27/01/2017 at 15:03

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Fri 27 Jan 2017 15:24
Nissan Mirca CVT transmission good reliability? - focussed

I ran a K11 with an auto CVT box for a couple of years as a second driving school car. Didn't have any problems with the car, or the CVT box- a lovely little car-it wasn't new when I got it and I put about 20 k miles on it.

It's a slightly unusual d*****ine from engine to box in that there is a magnetic powder clutch on the flywheel which is electrically operated from it's own ECU.

Every service - inspect the carbon brushes and slip rings in the flywheel housing through an access cover and replace the brushes if worn to the limit- i suspect the average garage mechanic doesn't know about that feature and could explain a lot of the so-called CVT failures.

I also seem to remember that the CVT box needed an unusual grade of ATF.

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Fri 27 Jan 2017 17:33
Nissan Mirca CVT transmission good reliability? - SLO76
"Every service - inspect the carbon brushes and slip rings in the flywheel housing through an access cover and replace the brushes if worn to the limit- i suspect the average garage mechanic doesn't know about that feature and could explain a lot of the so-called CVT failures."

No rutine service will cover this especially on a cheap old car at a non franchise garage and you're right that's probably the reason the boxes caused trouble but even ex mobility cars we took in with main dealer histories went haywire.

With tight margins on small cars even when nearly new dealers won't bother sending the car or box to a specialist to fix and will as we did just bounce it back to auction to be someone else's problem.
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Fri 27 Jan 2017 15:15
Nissan Mirca CVT transmission good reliability? - SLO76
If I was shopping for a very cheap small auto I'd probably be aiming at the Kia Picanto which is largely trouble free and well made.
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Fri 27 Jan 2017 15:27
Nissan Mirca CVT transmission good reliability? - focussed

Does anybody know why the forum software doesn't like the word

"d r i v e l i n e" as in my previous post and has censored it?

A bit easily offended isn't it?

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Fri 27 Jan 2017 17:44
Nissan Mirca CVT transmission good reliability? - elekie&a/c doctor

These old Micras were goog old soldiers that gave very little trouble.It was only rot or a failed gearbox that would send them to a grave. As for other makes,anything with 2 pedals with fancy names for their "auto" boxes ,are probably best avoided,as they are usually robotised manual gearbox with dreaded electronics bolted to the side.This includes things like the Toyota Mmt or Honda i -shift.

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Fri 27 Jan 2017 19:36
Nissan Mirca CVT transmission good reliability? - FP

Perhaps it doesn't like the word "d*****".

Edit: I was right. It's pretty absurd, of course.

Edited by FP on 27/01/2017 at 19:37

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Sat 28 Jan 2017 13:46
Nissan Mirca CVT transmission good reliability? - amyamandaallen

Wife happily ran a 1.3 micra auto with CVT for the last 6 years ( til the sills got us ) without any issues. As others said apart from the cross member rotting these go on forever ( ours was quite badly corroded but had an independant welder do it for £105 as opposed to garage who wanted £330 )

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