Delica Canada | Mitsubishi Van Club

sorry, dont know if its appropriate for the mitsubishi forum, but whatevs:

can anybody tell me anything about the Subaru CVT's? i understand CVT in principle. i have heard that they Subaru CVTs have problems. anybody out there with a sambar?
im looking for a sambar VW replica, ive heard there are other makes of this replica but cant find one.

Each of the major Japanese manufacturers use a different form of CVT, with Nissan applying it now to their whole range of vehicles (last I heard). Not sure about the Subaru version but according to wikipedia it's only in their kei cars.

From what I understand the CVT is a recent innovation, at least as the market is concerned

conceptualized in 1490 by leonardo da vinci first patented in 1886, in motorcycles since 1910... I'm not sure I'd call it "recent"

Subaru introduced it to their kei vehicles in 1987.

FalcoColumbarius wrote:Really? When I drove it (around the block) it went like stink, like a go-cart. I kept wanting to gear down when I came to the corners... but I couldn't. I drove it once for maybe five minutes... so I wouldn't take my words for the gospel, as it were.

Falco.

It had a nice top speed, and once you got it going it was ok. I just found that from a dead stop there was a noticeable acceleration lag when trying for a "0-60" type acceleration as I did when turning left. After being terrified by that - and my South African passengers wondering why I am crawling across the intersection, I tried to accelerate hard on purpose at another stop. I let them know I was going to do this - and it just accelerated gutlessly. It was ok after that first "second" of delay when there was a strange lag, once it started going it was fine. It felt like the pedal did not respond properly when the vehicle was at a dead stop.

The Sambars do come in an ECVT (Electronic Continuously Variable Transmission) version. I was very curious about these, but was never able to find one to try out. The North American kei markets are pretty leary of CVT transmissions. Apparently the big fear is that the belt that the whole thing depends on is expensive to replace.

It seemed to me that it was easier (ie. less hard) to find ECVT Sambar vans than trucks.

There was one fellow on minitrucktalk.com who had an ECVT Sambar. It might be worth tracking him down.

falco, youve got too much time on your hands. but yes, the sambar vans from the early '90s have got the CVT for sure. the issue seems to be, not so much reliability, but replace-ability

after oil wrote:falco, youve got too much time on your hands.

Si.

the justy had the ecvt here in the late 80s- early 90s

the ecvt in the sambar should be the same one used in the justy since there was only one ecvt made by subaru. also the new subaru cvts are chain driven not belt and run at alot higher pressures than all the other cvts out there

...and the mechanics say that they are reliable, but if one does crapout, the vehicle might sit for a long time before a new trannny is found...

FalcoColumbarius wrote:Why do you want a CVT, anyway?

im curious about those VW replicas...

I love the concept of CVTs never used one on anything but a snowmobile though