So today I was driving our R52 (yes, it's the CVT), and stopped at a stoplight. At that moment, the transmission quit working - no noise, no whirring, nothing, like it was in neutral.
I had the CVT fail before - and it had plenty of warning and whirring noise that got louder and louder until it busted. But this had no noise. We pushed the car off the road, and got a tow. But there was a huge puddle of transmission fluid where we were stopped. I'm hoping just the transmission coolant line broke, or slipped off or something. Has anyone seen this sort of thing?

 

So needless to say it wasn't a broken line or anything like that. Found a brand new CVT on ebay for a good price, will swap it out, hopefully give me another 120k miles.

 

So, in case this happens to anyone else, the transmission coolant line popped off. No idea why, or what damage happened to the transmission. But replacing the transmission with a new one ran about $3000. I probably wouldn't have done it except I found an awesome deal on a brand new transmission - $1800 (including shipping). Local garage swapped them out for $1250, but that also included replacing both CV axles (which were getting old in the tooth also), flushing the radiator, replacing the coolant lines, etc.

 

Just curious did you / the garage try repairing the coolant line and refilling it with fresh fluid to see if the transmission would function? Guessing the answer is "no" because it was safely assumed destroyed, but was wondering how vulnerable the CVT is to this type of problem; if it's an instant game over or if it might be salvageable depending on how long it was run while dry.

 

No, we didn't bother. The transmission had about 90k miles on it, so I was all jazzed about getting a new one. It's likely that would have got it going, but no idea how much damage had been done in the transmission itself. I toyed with the idea of pulling it apart and doing a rebuild on it, since the parts aren't that expensive. But in the end, the new transmission is like night and day above the old one - much smoother going into gear, no lag, etc.