This is a big topic, so I'll try to boil it down a bit. No CVT from any manufacturer can be driven indefinitely without maintenance, and the biggest problem with Nissan CVT's is Nissan's maintenance recommendations. They're absurd, so forget the book. With regular fluid changes, there's nothing in a CVT to wear out, so they can pretty much be perpetual motion machines. With zero maintenance and a leadfoot driver, failure before 100K miles is pretty much guaranteed. That's because of a CVT's construction. It has a metal belt riding on metal pulleys with only fluid in between. So when the fluid wears out, metal meets metal and the tranny is cooked. Simple as that. With 30K changes we've literally seen one old Murano approach 500K miles, and it's still going even though the rest of the car is falling apart around it.
CVT's are also susceptible to failure from overfilling, so if you get your services done by others and don't DIY it, watch out for places that let oil-changers service CVT's. That's becoming increasingly common in these days of labor shortages, but simply dumping 5 quarts of fluid in after a change amounts to a CVT death sentence. Stick to professional technicians and not Jiffy Lube. If you DIY it, there are two perfectly good methods of getting the level right every time, and plenty of posts in here about how to do it. Past warranty, you can keep the cost of changes down by switching to a quality aftermarket fluid like AMSoil or Eneos. Both of those are equal or better than Nissan NS3 in all performance categories, but cost less than half.
Lastly, the other enemy of CVT fluid is heat. That can be from lead-footing, climbing steep hills regularly, or any sort of trailering. If any of those shoes fit, invest in an aftermarket trans cooler.
With all that said, when buying used, insist on records. If the previous owner went 60K or more with no transmission service on a 4-cyl CVT, or 80K or more on a 6-cyl, proceed to the next car. Here are a few other notes:
- The 6-cyl CVT's will absorb a lot more neglect and abuse than 4-cyls. That's a function of the smaller belt cross-section in the 4-bangers. While you might think the higher horsepower of a 6-cyl would make it more failure prone and not less, the reverse is true, at least in Nissans.
- Gen6 Altimas ('19~21') have beefier belts and we've seen very few problems with them. The Rogue is getting the same treatment for '22. Maximas and Muranos are pretty bulletproof in any year.
- Avoid '16~17 Altimas unless there are records that the Valve Body or entire trans has been replaced. The VB's on all '16's and early '17's had a problem with soft material.
- The Sentra, Versa and Note all have a hybridized CVT with planetary gears and a high-low range. That works well to keep excessive torque loading off the belt, but sacrifices longevity because the clutches in the planetary assembly will wear out like regular A/T clutches. Most of the non-heat-related tranny failures we see in those models are in the clutches and not the belt, but on the good side of the ledger, they tend to wear out at fairly high mileages like a regular A/T.
- Some Sentras, Versas, and Notes don't have transmission heat exchangers, and we see many heat-related failures in those. The exchanger is basically a system that dumps CVT heat into the radiator outlet tank, and it works extremely well provided the car's cooling system doesn't have issues. You can tell if an exchanger is present by how many hoses come out of the "beehive" on the front of the tranny. It's a device that looks just like an old beekeeper's box, and four hoses coming out of it means an exchanger is present. Two means it isn't. If not, invest in an aftermarket cooler and a 4-port hive immediately.
