jcalabria

Yep... that's what I was referring to!

In '93 testing at Silverstone, David Coulthard in a Williams-Renault with a Van Doorne CVT was 1.5 seconds per lap faster than a similar Williams with a conventional gearbox - and the Williams cars were already a second a lap faster than the competition. They were banned for the '94 season before they ever made it to live competition.

The CVT was especially effective for two main reasons... the CVT kept the engine in its very narrow power band (quicker response out of corners) and lower fuel consumption meant lighter fuel loads (higher cornering speeds and shorter braking distances).

It's competitive superiority would have meant hugely escalating costs for other teams to keep up (most of which did not have Williams' deep pockets), so it was banned. They were also concerned, not completely a surprise to us, that the monotone engine sound would reduce the fan enjoyment of the race.

More pics:

jcalabria

I know you can do it but thought you needed a special tool. For some brands its just a magnet but others, including Nissan, had a special electronic gizmo of some type.

Personally, without Nav I probably wouldn't care since it doesn't display which wheel is low anyway. I might care if I had a display indicating actual pressure at each corner and all the wheel positions had been interchanged.

I'd love to see the Nissan procedure if you come across it.

tehaviator

God, that's good news. I'm at ~1500 right now, and I'm seeing a bit better gas mileage than at first....from 16 to about 18 in the city. I'll be happy once I see 20 and ecstatic if I get anything beyond that.

jcalabria

I'm seeing ~22 city and 26-27 hwy. That's relatively meaningless because your conditions may be different. What is meaningful is that CVT city mileage is about 2 mpg higher than my smaller '03 VQ35/4AT on the same streets with the same drivers.

BTW, I started in 12-13 city range and didn't hit your numbers until about 4500 miles, so you're not doing too badly.