Kizzy owners with CVT fluid...
There seems to be quite a bit of activity on the forum regarding changing the CVT fluid recently. There's nothing in the owner's manual on the maintenance interval or even a note that says it's a lifetime fluid. No maintenance needed. (which is not uncommon these days). So some have turned to the maintenance cycle of other vehicles that have the same CVT in them, like the Nissan Altima. Before changing it as a do-it-yourself project, I would consider this: The power train has a 100K mile warranty. The CVT is expensive to fix. A lot of us in this forum, if we had to pay for a CVT, would probably move on from our sordid love affair with thus four wheeled beauty rather than fix her. I've thought about changing mine. Then I thought that if something goes wrong with it during the warranty period, a warranty claim could be (more likely would be) denied because the service performed on it was not done correctly, wrong fluid, wrong parts, the fluid level wrong, it was contaminated during the service or a host of other excuses not to cover it. Remember that Suzuki does not deal in cars in NA any longer and they don't have much incentive for customer service, especially when it comes to replacing a CVT. If I were to have mine done, I would bite the bullet and have one of the 3 authorized Suzuki service centers in my area handle it. Once over 100K miles, all bets are off of course. Do as you please.
2011 Kizashi SLS CVT (silver)
2005 Honda Odyssey
Priors:
2009 Suzuki SX4 Cross AWD 5-speed Tech package (vapor metallic blue)
2005 Honda Odyssey
Priors:
2009 Suzuki SX4 Cross AWD 5-speed Tech package (vapor metallic blue)
It's odd that they treat CVT fluid like some maintenance-free fluid. Yeah, CVTs don't work like conventional gears but they still use a torque converter. However, I agree that if the maintenance schedule doesn't include a CVT fluid change, it might be better to hold Suzuki to their warranty until after it expires. I'd then change it following the Service Manual carefully or take it to an Authorized Suzuki Service Dealer. I really don't trust "life-long" fluids in cars.
2011 Suzuki Kizashi Sport GTS 6MT (Black)
Yup. "Lifetime" means the life of the warranty.KuroNekko wrote:I really don't trust "life-long" fluids in cars.
I'd look into the service schedule of other manufacturers using the same CVT and see what they do. Either way, a drain and fill every 50k miles is probably cheap insurance