My EX CVT faced a horrible headwind this morning on my commute. Watching the current instant milage was painful. So as I drove 70mph straight into the wind I noticed the rpms sitting at about 3000. Seemed a little high (pretty sure its normally a hair above 2000 on this stretch of the road most days. So I got the idea of upshifting. I figured why not. So click and D7 appears on the dash and the rpms dropped to about 2000. About 10-15 seconds later D was back on and my rpms returned to 3000.

Wouldn't D7 at ~2000 been more ideal than 3000? Why did the CVT switch back?


Just curious.


Edit note: I keep trying to edit the typo in the title (form should be for) but it just doesn't seem to save the fix

 

I think there are two things going on for your drive. First, the reason the car shifted from D7 back to D, should have been because you had the shifter in D and not S. If you had the shifter in S, then it should have stayed in D7. Second, although the RPM in D7 was 2000 vs the 3000 in D, the car thinks (in D) that the engine needs to rev a little higher to fight the wind. Similar to going uphill. I think you could drive in D7 at 2000 RPM, it may be a little heavy on the engine compared to putting more power behind the wheels turning. I don't know if continually driving at below ideal RPMs can have ill effects on the engine and transmission or not.

 

I can't figure out why your CVT wouldn't be at the optimum ratio (which would allow the RPMs to be closer to 2k than 3k) if you were just cruising at 70mph. Were you traveling up a hill and/or accelerating? If you were just maintaining speed, the wind would not force a "fake" downshift.

 

I'd say that at most it was a slight incline where I shifted. Perhaps enough to warrant the change. Maybe this wasn't such a good test afterall

 

Relatively wind free drive this morning. When I was on that same stretch of road I checked the rpms....2300-2400. Throw some nasty wind in there and I guess 3000 isn't too outlandish.


So....nevermind.

 

Normally at 70mph you should be seeing about 2300 rpm on the tach so another 700 would be like dropping a gear under increased load. A conventional automatic would do the same thing.



I think this has been the hardest adjustment for me in driving a CVT equipped Fit in that above 3000rpm the engine becomes much more audible as it picks a spot between 3000 and 4000rpm and stays there like a leaf blower rather than rev out and shift.

 

With a headwind your engine needed to make more power to keep the car moving. Given the choice of doing it at 3000RPM and partial throttle or 2000 and more throttle the computer decided on what was probably the more economical setting.

Even at 3000, you're spinning slower than 6-speed with no headwind.