Jap import auto gearbox failures

NZ is still a dumping ground for these little secondhand tin cans that are throwaways in their country of origin. Not built to last more than 3 or 4 years.

Ahh you are no doubt talking about the AW55-50.
Depends on whether it's been fastidiously maintained or not and what km's, most are not maintained as they should be. In my experience, pretty rare to see one much over 100K that hasn't been replaced/repaired. The more powerful the motor attached the quicker they give trouble.

I'll make my point clear and its the point I always make
When it comes to car ownership the ONLY difference between a Jap owner and a kiwi owner is the shape of their eyes.
For every utterly fastidious owner there is a bush pig that uses their car as a mobile rubbish dump.
For every owner that treats his vehicle as a prized possession theres someone who feels that the oil was filled when it was new and thats enough.
BUT theres several BIG differences when it comes to cars on the roads of NZ.
1)Jap (and all used) imports are required to undergo a pretty extensive safety inspection before they go on the roads of NZ. So the chances of buying a rust bucket or a badly repaired car are hugely reduced.
2)Jap cars are required to undergo Shaken whilst in service in japan. part of which are things like mandatory brake fluid replacement.For the sake of this discussion Shaken is like a WOF on steroids.
3)The pool of available jap cars is fairly big meaning ones clearly abused by owners are rejected by reputable dealers.
4)In order to keep prices down or profits up NZ spec cars tend to be of the lower end of the budget scale.
5)Jap cars genuinely do often only get used on a sunday. Walk around a residential prefecture on a working day and the train station has hundreds of bicycles around it and cars are parked in carports.
6)You mention "orphans' Which is a fair assessment until you dig a tiny bit under the skin and find that the "orphan" is exactly the same car as a common model elsewhere. Just wearing slightly different clothes.
7)despite what our ego's demand NZ is a pimple on the worlds backside.
we are only the 8th biggest purchaser of used jap cars. -I am including the Jap domestic market for used vehicles. in that 8
8) you comment on kiwi cars being serviced regularly but in my experience NZ would be the very worst at cost cutting on serviceing.
9)The WORST odo winding has to be here in nZ where theres something to gain by it
10)Yes I sell jap imports. Now you don't know me and fair enough but my biggest nightmare is a customer ending up dead because of a car I sold them.jap imports give me the best chance of ensuring that doesn't happen
but I make no secret that I love SV6 commodores.

And your sweeping statement is based upon what factual evidence or knowledge. ? That's the sort of thing the new car boys were screaming from the rooftops back in the late Eighties, when they were desperately trying to protect their industry. And I never blame them for that- they simply used whatever tools were at their disposal.

But it's 2015 now, not 1987, and not only have we seen some 28 years of used Japanese imports, the sky hasn't fallen in, cars are no more or less reliable according to where they started life, and Kiwi car buyers are no fools. Most are on to their fifth, or sixth, import in a row. Most will buy another. And- remember this- EVERYTHING sold here is imported. We are a TINY market in the world scheme. Manufacturers do not tailor entire assembly lines to the New Zealand market 'cos we're special. We get what we're given in the most part.

Dumping ground? 3-4 years? Really? I guess no-one told that to the Japanese public, many of which are quite happily driving round in 10-12-14 years old cars. There would be a national outrage in Japan if people perceived the manufacturers were building in obselesence. (sp). There's a healthy used car industry in Japan too, did you know that? And we, as buyers, compete with them for stock- as does the rest of the right-hand-drive market in the world (and a number of LHD ones too). And their yards have plenty of older stock, too.

Japanese car values are dictated almost entirely by the taxation system- our registration, or Shaken as it's known in Japan. Shaken intervals are roughly 3 years, then 2 years, then 2 years, then annually, very expensive and prefaced by an equally expensive and invasive inspection of the car. The artificial cost of this system gives owners pause for thought about either trading in at that point (and buying a new car, to support the domestic manufacturing industry) or paying the costs to put it on the road.

Japanese depreciation cycles and the resultant values are designed purely to prop up their domestic industry, it's got nothing to do with the condition of lifespan of the cars. It's not until the third Shaken cycle, or usually the year after the 1-year (if that makes sense) that a car will be worth more to sell, than to keep. Again, there are plenty of Japanese domestic dealers whom we also compete against.

At the 3 to 5 year point in the value cycle we must choose carefully, there are quite a few models that are simply too valuable for us to buy.

And remember- we DO leave most of it up there. NZ's buying is only a very small portion of the available used vehicle stock being cascaded (at any age) through their fleet, including ELV's. We take an average of 9-10,000 cars per month. The domestic fleet in Japan sees an average of approx. 400-450,000 NEW cars every MONTH, and their fleet is NOT increasing in size.

I could go on giving you some statistics on this to prove my point but I think you get the idea.

Have you ever been to Japan?

Anyway, disclaimers:
-I bought my first "Jap Import" I 1987. Yep, 28 years ago.
-My first buying trip was in 1997.
-I regularly visit Japan and have a role in the wider industry that allows me insight into the way their market and fleet works.
-I do statistical analysis of the Japanese vehicle market place.
-I have bought and sold vehicles full-time for 24 of the past 27 years.
-I buy and sell as many NZ new cars these days as Japanese imports.
-I have an in-depth view of the NZ fleet dynamic through my work here in New Zealand.

-I offer no bias in my statements above. I like new cars as much as I like used. I have never bought a brand-new car but I certainly would like to before they nail the lid shut on me.

-Statements like the above "dumping ground" one annoy me intensely, simply because they're baseless accusations with no factual content to back them up, apart from rhetoric that sounds good enough to serve the opinion of the writer at the time.

Peace.

Mate we are currently number 8 purchaser of used jap vehicles.-so 7 others buy more than us.

OP, in my opinion a lot of the transmission failures you mention may be coming from the likes of the CVT Nissan Notes, Wingroads etc of the 2000's.

It's not a case of just "early" Nissan CVT transmissions being rubbish. The failures of the CVT's in the above vehicles has reached epidemic proportions. Bottom line is, they fail for one reason or another by around 130'000km.

These vehicles as a whole are designed as disposable units, hence the complete lack of rust protection, sub standard plastic parts etc. The idea being the Japanese buy them new and send them for recycling before 5 years is up.

Trouble is, as mentioned above, they are being bought up cheap as chips in Japan and flogged off here as being everything they are not (reliable, low cost motoring).

It's not uncommon for a Nissan dealer to have half a dozen vehicles in at once for transmission replacement. That's how bad it is.

So, why is this not "common knowledge"?

It all comes back to psychological conditioning. Our entire used car industry revolves around used imports and has done for decades. With a very large and vocal group "accentuating the positive" of these vehicles to put money in their pockets, they can create enough social/psychological momentum to hide even the most obvious of situations. This is especially easy given they already have the excellent reputation of Nissan's older vehicles to play on. People identify with brands and it takes a long time for them to realise when times change and they are no longer producing a quality product.

Japs keep our scrap yards busy anyway.

NO kiwi drivers keep the scrap yards busy.

This isn't an "attack from a typical used import car salesman type" either, in case you're wondering. I deal in cold, hard reality and experience. I don't know very much about the inner workings of the European marketplace or their products, so I feel it's not appropriate or fair to comment on it. (even though I've travelled extensively through Europe, both as a backpacker tourist, and a truck driver). Perhaps you might consider a similar stance.

Whoops- I stuffed up the quote points- but you get the idea. My bad.

And Kaz, just FYI, in keeping with "keeping it to the facts", NZ was the 4th largest importer of used Japanese vehicles in 2014, a position it has held more or less for many years now (fifth if you count the Japanese Domestic used marketplace, which topped out at 3,751,533 units in 2014.
:-)

Thanks to everyone, been some lively discussion here!
Easy to see two very different point of view, both of experience. One is that jap cars on their market are made to dispose and gearboxes are crap, another that their all fine and dandy and wonderful.
I'm sorry some got so worked up, I do wish people could see I wasn't making statements rather asking questions, and yes stating my opinion but with an open mind.
Westwyn, I enjoyed your considered input but the second last (I think) post confused me. Not sure who you were addressing In that one, I didn't suggest anything about us being a dumping ground at all.
As to us being 8 th largest only. Well maybe but we are a tiny country that has its market dominated by imports and I don't know of any western nation like it, certainly not Aussie, Europe, US. It's percetage that matters not numbers surely.
Comments about NZ not getting specially set up cars just for us insult my intelligence frankly. I'm not stupid. But I do know that we get cars in tuning suitable for us. Sure it's not unique, and is usually same as Aussies get, but it's suitable for our roads is the point. Again this won't apply to every make and model, but it's mentioned often enough in car launches and write ups.

Anyway, this has got all rather out of hand don't you feel? No argument is needed here. Let's move on.

No drama tamarillo, the last long post was written in reply to jazzpianoma and his opinions, nothing to do with your posts. I just stuffed up the post by not utilising the "quote" function properly. :-(

Just a point re your last post- it's true, there's not a truly "Western" nation that imports the used volumes we do, but all the others have a manufacturing industry to support and incentivise. Australia- for example- soon won't, however, as the Government woke up to the fact that every job in vehicle manufacturing industry (that is, GM-H, Ford and Toyota) is subsidized by a whopping $150,000AUD.

UK, France, Germany, Spain, Belgium, Sweden, Czech Republic, Austria, Italy, Poland etc- plus of course the USA, Canada etc- all have huge manufacturing industries to maintain, and the taxation / tariff structure reflects the intention to offer a protectionist net around them- used or even parallel imports run entirely contrary to those aims.

Cheers Tamarillo- nice discussion with you!

A few years ago I had a Jap import Merc C230 (1996 model). when I bought it at 100,000kms I got the auto trans serviced. My Merc specialist said the old fluid was very dirty and the pan dirty and that the fluid had probably never been changed. It was refilled with the recommended Merc fluid - expensive! About 25,000kms later it started changing rough and when stripped alot of the mechanical components were very worn necessitating a rebuild. That car was later sold to a friend and the tranny was on the way out again by about 250,000 kms. I have heard other similar experiences on Mercs but not only on Mercs.

Father in law bought a brand new v6 accord in 2004. Its up to 360 000km never had a fault with the transmission and he tows a boat with it.

And the last two auto fails I know of were both NZ new Fords, one costing about 9k to fix.

I have had a lot of Mercs, never changed transmission fluid yet. All have been Germany assembled and never had any problems. Any that have had problems are because of fluid changes.

I got 230 000kms out of my Odyssey before I sold it 2 years ago and I towed a trailer once a month with it for 5-6 years. It's still on the road today with the same transmission, but I serviced mine regularly. Yes they have weak transmissions but will last well if maintained.

Source - first hand from a specialist Nissan CVT repairer.

I have actually personally seen the causes of failures in these units, seen how they are repaired, discussed and hypothesised various problems and given input into possible solutions.

I didn't bother reading any further down your post, once people start with the personal attacks I usually stop reading and they get added to my troll blocker.

My post wasn't intended to elicit a response from you anyway, just to give my opinion and the reasoning behind it. Have a nice day.

That's the point I'm making though. lack of proper maintainance.
I suspect that even the early model Honda fit gearbox would give a lot better service if serviced even as required by Honda.

You have made a statement of fact. Where is the evidence to back this statement up? give JUST ONE Nissan dealership in the country right now with 6 nissans in for tranz replacement.

No, this was tried on a fleet of taxi's at the time in (Singapore?, sorry read the tech article many years ago). Obviously taxi's do get a very hard time of it, but even with super short maintenance intervals (much shorter than recommended) they still didn't seem to last very long at all. Can't remember the exact numbers, do a google and you will likely find the article.

Obviously, servicing helps, keep the oil clean and wear is reduced. It's just that sometimes there are key design flaws at play as well. Same goes with the AW 55-50, you can improve the life span in my experience but only by so much.

Also seems to be true of Nissan CVT's, obviously the correct fluid and servicing is important. However judging by the beautifully clean fluid coming out of the majority of these failed unit's and the km's to failure it's not the key issue.

No. I suspect you haven't read my post above.

That's all I am going to say on the matter. Believe me or don't, I have seen more than enough evidence first hand to be personally satisfied and trust what I have been told by individuals who are more than qualified to make the assertion.

I am aware many, many people read these boards. I wouldn't be so mean as to put people off some of the most popular cars on our roads if I wasn't entirely personally satisfied that the reasoning was sound and backed with clear evidence.

Lol that's because of the lack of regular changes, if you did it when it was supposed to be done they would last even longer. If you let an auto sludge up nicely and then give it a shot of new fluid with its nice fresh detergent qualities what do you think is going to happen? Muppet motorists in this country only do auto servicing when they think there's an imminent problem then moan that what they've done has rooted it and I shouldn't have let the garage touch it wah wah wah and then the cycle repeats.

Point taken thanks, yes this has been. lively. Seems people feel quiet forceful about it, which I hadn't realised! I'm an amateur here, an enthusiast who reads too much probably!
My personal take is that a good car from good importer that's welll checked is a great car. Elsewhere you take your chances, as indeed you do with a local car. Maybe I'm just old enough to remember how important fSh used to be and still feel reassured by it.
I have had three imported euro cars all were excelant. Two bmw that gave me many many long years of trouble free driving and one now lives with my mate in golden bay and is trashed by numerous tourists every summer, never washed or cared for, and continues to run fine despite it's years. So I don't disregard imports, was simply interested in what seemed to be an excessive number of complaints re auto boxes.
Catch you around again no doubt.