I'm 19 years old and my faithful 2007 Honda Civic with 260k miles finally suffered a cracked engine block and I scrapped it. My new car is a 2018 Nissan Sentra SV with 79k miles, 1 owner with full maintenance records. Yes I know Nissan has some history of bad reliability but it was one of the cheapest cars I could find under 5 years old and under 100k miles. At least I got a good deal on it! Now that I have it, what is your best advice on how to maintain it to get through at least my four-year loan term and another 80-120k miles with any major problems?
Unfortunately there's nothing you can do to make Nissan's CVT transmission last longer.
It's not you. It's them
Sell it while the used car market is still crazy and buy another civic or corolla.
If you can’t sell it. Or can’t get get any significant money for it.
Change the CVT transmission fluid ASAP. And do it everyone 20K-30K miles. That’s the first thing to go out on them. And you can delay that, by doing the CVT transmission fluid change religiously.
it was one of the cheapest cars I could find
and you get what you pay for
what is your best advice
Start saving up for a replacement transmission or another vehicle.
While you’re at it -
People are saying that you can't prolong their life are wrong.
First of all, the mandatory disclaimer, the Sentra is a bad starting point.
The Transmission installed in it is the worst of the worst - it seems to be the JF015E.
Failures can occur at just 60k miles, It's the weakest part in a LADA.
You need to replace the transmission oil very frequently, even more frequently than 20k-25k miles.
Reading online, some people claim to begin having pulley bering whine at just 25k.
But the main thing that will allow this transmission to last, is moderate driving.
You do not want to strain this transmission, and you really want to do anything you can to avoid internal slippage!
No quick starts, no full throttle over taking and obviously no rough roads or rocking in the snow.
you should start carefully and let the TCC lockup before carefully adding more throttle.
When overtaking, press "-" to lower the gear and then slowly add more throttle.
stop and go traffic is another big issue for these, you must avoid creeping or rough accelerations forwards.
Basically you need to adopt driving patterns that are compatible with a belt driving CVT.
Continuous oil changes are also not workable for this car. My friend got a brand new Sentra 2017 one considering saving money and the transmission went off at 50k kms. He has a corolla 97' model which he keeps as a sentimental value which has 7,50,000 kms and still is running much better than the Sentra.
Sell it if it doesn't have much loss financially and get a good corolla/ civic/ city/ camry.
