This is my 4th Nissan vehicle and the 2nd I've owned that has a cvt transmission. I'm currently at 146k miles and will be doing my 3rd cvt fluid at 150k miles. Just by chance I came across a thread here that mentioned the cvt filter, so I dug some more and found that my car in fact has one. I ordered one from my local Nissan dealer and will be doing this bit of maintenance when I reach the magic number. Thank you to all the guys who mentioned that fact in your posts. I'll make this a part of my normal maintenance routine.

 

Is it a filter or a mesh screen?

 

it's located on the driver's side, behind the splash guard in the wheel well. It's a regular little filter.

 

Thanks for the picture Tablerocker, the parts guy at the dealership wasn't even aware that it existed even when I gave him the part number and showed him a picture of it.

 

For those that changed it, did it appear dirty if you could even tell?

 

The only way I could tell was the color of the fluid after another 50K miles. It still looked green like it came out of the bottle while before the filter replacement, if was much darker. Of course I "flushed" (by running the car long enough to pump out a quart and then added more until I had gone thru 8 quarts. All other times just a drain and refill with filter change and I noticed no change in fluid color over the last 5 drain and fills..

 

I would like to take a filter from a car with ~75,000 miles on it and cut it apart and see what it looks like. This 'filter' may just be a screen-type thing? Looks similar to a fuel filter, actually.

 

Dealer drained and refilled my CVT with 4.5 quarts. They also changed the filter per my request. I asked them to hand me the old filter. They did, when tilting the input tube of the filter, dirty black fluid comes out. I still have the old filter. Planning to crack it open and see inside.