Is this a normal occurrence? Nissan CVT content.

So I was with a friend yesterday and we elected to take her '13 Sentra instead of the Mustang due to the whole AC thing. We got to talking about the fact that it's transmission gave up the ghost and had to be replaced a couple months ago at like 68k miles. I asked her how it's been doing since she got it back and apparently it's awful. It will now abruptly drop to a lower ratio when coasting downhill and any decent amount of throttle input will have it pegged to 4500-5000rpm for a few moments before the revs start to fall back down and the car starts accelerating.

I only have a rough idea of the general concept of how a cvt works and don't know any of the details. I just know if any of my normal automatics acted like that I would say it's broken and needs attention.

So any idea what might going on with it? Is it just E36 M3 when it works right?

Sounds borked.  Ask her if it's like it was when the transmission was new, or at least working right.  If she just had the tranny replaced, and it's way different,  then it sounds to me like they didn't get something right, and hopefully the work was warrantied. 

3rd tier japanese low quality product = no surprise

talk to a nissan service advisor and see how routinely their trans die with low miles

nissan makes ford recent trash news on focus and fiesta seem like mother teresas doing..... 

She's had the car since like 20k miles and this behavior is definitely new and started when she got it back with the new trans. She also told me she asked somebody at the shop that did the work if it was something she did that caused the early demise of the original trans and was told "oh this happens all the time with these CVTs" 

If it was just replaced then it is likely still under some kind of warranty.  Take it back. 

Find one for sale and have her test drive it. 

In reply to Steve_Jones :

She's put 50k miles on the car so I would assume she knows what it's supposed to feel like more than me, that's probably why she mentioned it to me. 

But as far as I know it's still under warranty. So I suppose the best course of action is probably to make them try again.

At least get a repair order with her complaint, the date, and the mileage clearly stated.

Take it back.

I told her she should atleast call them and tell them it was still having problems. Apparently it was a Nissan dealership in town that did the work. Turns out they tried to be difficult about fixing it the first time, so this might end up being interesting. 

hmmm, sounds like CVT in this case stands for:

Crappy

Very bad

Transmission

I may be overly harsh, but I have no desire to ever own a CVT-equipped vehicle.

In reply to slowbird :

Me neither. It was junk on the last 2 stroke ATV I rode with one I don't imagine a car is any better.

My understanding has been that Nissan has had a rash of CVT problems lately, but when I Google it, I'm not seeing anyone credible really putting together a full story. At most, I'm seeing credible organizations mentioning the issues in passing. Maybe I just lack Google skills.

It seems, based on my sample, the one they use behind the four cylinders, such as the Rogue, are pretty much junk.  The dealership here changes a ton of them.  The Murano V6 version seems less troublesome.

This is completely anecdotal and a tiny sample size, but, I had a Nissan Versa as a rental car for a week a about two years ago and the transmission behaviour was notable.  I think it was CVT.  I daily drive other brands that are manual equipped, so I have no idea if it was normal behavior but I certainly noticed it would rev very high up hill and down.  It was pretty much exactly as described in the original post.  If that is normal for Nissan, these would be very hard cars to live with and I'm not surprised the transmissions die early.  I'd expect the rest of the car wouldn't be far behind...

(not) WilD (Matt) said:

This is completely anecdotal and a tiny sample size, but, I had a Nissan Versa as a rental car for a week a about two years ago and the transmission behaviour was notable.  I think it was CVT.  I daily drive other brands that are manual equipped, so I have no idea if it was normal behavior but I certainly noticed it would rev very high up hill and down.  It was pretty much exactly as described in the original post.  If that is normal for Nissan, these would be very hard cars to live with and I'm not surprised the transmissions die early.  I'd expect the rest of the car wouldn't be far behind...

My father was just saying that the Toyota Corolla rental that he had in Texas would do the same thing as described as well. If he had the cruise control on, and came to a downhill grade, the RPMs would shoot to 5000rpm and stay there the whole way down. And the Corolla rental he had a year or so ago when my parents went to North Carolina did the same thing too.