Scotty,
I'm an idiot.
In full disclaimer, I was desperate for anything that ran that was in my price range. I recently landed a 2013 Nissan Pathfinder Platinum. It has the Nissan CVT that you hate so much.
In my defense, it replaced an '06 Chevy Malibu that was more or less leaving a trail of parts and lubricants everywhere it went. I never hear you badmouth those cars but boy that thing is a dud!
Anyway, the Nissan has 135K on it, it came with a stack of maintenance records, and aside from some cosmetic parking lot rash type damage is in overall really good shape. Judging from the GPS history, it looks like it spent most of its life making runs between Houston and Baton Rouge. So a mix of stop and go nasty highway, and some reasonably open long legged highway runs.
There are receipts that show the CVT was replaced under an extended warranty.
The brake pedal while firm, seems to have some slow drop when holding for a while. Leading me to suspect possibly some leak down in the master cylinder since I see no evidence anywhere in the system of external leakage.
So lets start with the brakes...
I know some of these ABS equipped cars have unusual bleeding procedures such as starting at the drivers side front wheel and ending up at the passengers rear due to where the ABS stuff is located in the car. Is there a special bleeding procedure on these cars, or do we go old school and start furthest away from the master cylinder and work to the closest wheel?
And on that CVT, and I will take my lumps as they come, it works smoothly for now anyway. I would like to keep it doing so for as long as possible. What advice can you give me other than don't buy a Nissan with a CVT, to keep this rig on the road as long as possible.
One last thing, you might want to mention to folks, when they trade in a car with an infotainment system, they need to factory reset that thing. I know WAY more about the previous owners travel habits than I should...
Well, many of those do have kind of a slow drop on the pedal as they age. As long as it doesn't sink the whole way and a car starts rolling, it's something you'd more or less live with because it's kind of a feature of those things and you often have to replace the brake booster in the master cylinder assembly and if it stops good. Otherwise, I wouldn't worry about a little sinking as long as it doesn't go to the floor and start inching forwards
