2018 Qashqai 1.2DIG-T CVT Issue and dealer care

[Uri.T]

Hello,

I'm going to start by saying that we have a Nissan Qashqai that went on the road in January 2018 which means it was manufactured sometime in 2017. I'm not from the UK and I know it works a little different there with the plates and everything. it is a 1.2DIG-T Acenta, LHD 2x4 with CVT and 90K km on the clock, well maintained at Nissan shops with an oil change every 10K km (really hard to get info about things when browsing the forum as people are not always clear about whether their Qashqai is a patrol or diesel even).

I couple of weeks ago my wife reported that the car was a little jumpy and is not running smoothly, the rpm were unstable and you could feel little bumps in the seat while driving. when taking long highway drives it runs o.k. but after about 20 minutes of driving it would start acting up a little bit and really bad after getting of the highway. ones in a while it would have been really bad and accompanied by a instrument cluster party with the ESP light on, stop/start system fault warning, and blinking auto to the right of the "km to empty tank". also sometimes the orange "collision" light.

a few things I've done myself to solve the issue:
* New battery (old one was the original but worked fine)
* New Spark plugs and connector cleaning
* MAF cleaning
* BG intake manifold and throttle body spray used the wrong way, which made the problem worse but after a day made no difference.

Also important to mention that my out of date OBD scanner didn't pick up any fault codes. I went to a friend's shop and connected his Diagzone OBD scanner and some stored safety fault codes came up. after erasing them the car drove fine on that day (about 40 minutes).

After reading last night that the symptoms might indicate CVT issues, today I went to the main dealer, thinking that the problem can be solved by updating the CVT ECU program and/or changing the fluid.
(here we don't have direct connection to Nissan but to a company that imports and services Nissan, Renault and Dacia). on the way the car was almost completely fine (40 minutes drive), only when I got off the highway it started acting up (no warning lights).

when arriving at the shop I played dumb, didn't want them to realize I know a thing or two about cars and wanted to see if they'll be honest about the CVT issues. they weren't. after a five minute drive in the car they determined that the CVT need to be replaced with a brand new one - 6,750 euro including labor and tax. after checking they said they will cover 50% of the part cost which brought us to a little over 4000 euros.
I asked them if we should maybe connect their OBD computer and do a diagnosis and they said "no" I asked if this could be a matter of software update and they said "no". I told them I need a few days to think about it and drove away - the car drove fine.

two questions:
1. the car is out of warranty (time wise), did anyone ever get Nissan to cover the total cost of the CVT replacement?
2. Do you know of any warranty extensions for this model year outside of the U.S.A? (Nissan extended the CVT warranty there to 84 month and 84K miles)
3. Did anyone ever fixed this issue without replacing or rebuilding the CVT? (software update? fluid change?)

Thank you all and sorry for the long story, hope it will help someone in the future.

[MikeGC]

Uri,

Welcome to the forum.
I wish I could answer your questions, sadly I can’t

[Uri.T]

Thank you, I've actually been here for years, for some reason I can't log in with my old user.

[gloucester]

I can't recall anyone getting Nissan to replace the CVT free of charge when out of warranty.

There are one or two Nissan CVT specialists in the UK whom I'd normally suggest contacting but you're clearly not here.

[Uri.T]

Thank you. really surprising we don't see Nissan losing court cases (class actions or small claims) in Europe after how things ended in the U.S. I would a judge to (at the least) tell Nissan to give Europeans customer the same warranty extension.

The only option available at the main dealership is a brand new CVT. the cost is 6,750 euros which is a third of the value of the car. because the actually drives o.k most of the time which means the CVT is not yet in bad condition, I'm curios to hear how other people got the problem solved. I know rebuilding the CVT is cheaper and replacing it with a salvage on is also cheaper. but any chance somebody had the same symptoms I'm having and solved it with fluid and filter replacement?