Jatco JF011E

The Jatco pushbelt CVT that Nissan built its reputation on and then had to defend — a steel belt running between two pairs of movable cones, with no gears to step between and therefore no shift for a driver to feel. It went into cars from around 2005 and reached an enormous number of them.

Its first difficulty is that it has four names and most owners meet only one. Jatco calls it the JF011E. In a Nissan it is the RE0F10A. Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep called it CVT2. Mitsubishi called it F1CJA in front-wheel drive and W1CJA in four-wheel drive. A Caliber owner, a Compass owner and an Outlander owner are all running the same gearbox and will not find each other's answers without knowing that.

A CVT does not fail the way a geared automatic fails, and the difference is where the wear lands. There are no clutch packs shuttling in and out; there is one belt and two pairs of cone faces, and the cone surfaces are the unit's real service life. A belt is a replaceable part. A cone face that the belt has scored is not — resurfacing is not on offer, and once the faces are marked, a new belt is a new belt running on a damaged track. The whole maintenance argument for one of these is that a belt changed in time protects the surfaces it runs on.

What the trade actually replaces, and what each does:

• The step motor, which sets the ratio by moving the cones and fails from heat or simply from having done its allotted work. Its failure shows up as a ratio the car cannot hold.
• The high-pressure pump's regulating valve, worn, which is why a unit that seems mechanically fine has no pressure.
• The depress valve — a fault specific enough to this unit to be worth naming, because it starves the CVT of oil while nothing sounds wrong yet.
• The four input and output shaft bearings, which go together and are a consequence of overheating and a belt that was already past it.
• The solenoids, on the same ageing curve as everything else in the fluid.

Fluid is not a place to save money here. It runs a specific CVT fluid, and a CVT fluid is doing something an ATF does not: it has to let the belt grip the cones rather than lubricate the contact away. A substitute that looks similar and costs less is the commonest way one of these dies early, and the damage it does is to the surfaces above — the expensive half.

The honest summary for someone deciding whether to keep the car: early examples deserved their reputation and later ones are markedly better. Kept cool, given the right fluid, and not asked to hold a slipping belt up a hill for a decade, it is unremarkable. What it will not survive is being ignored until it slips, because by then the wear has moved from the part you can buy to the part you cannot.