I have already mentioned this an ECU/CVT controller is already in the works

 

^ sweet, but how will it work? can you give us some info?

 

Hopefully when i get to Japan , I will know more about how it works, i am dying to get my hands on this upgrade.

 

no joke, can you imagine driving a cvt car that engages like a snowmobile...just crazy.

 

^ eh?

 

Sorry, bit of explanation needed. Snowmobiles and some atvs use a form of cvt as well. The biggest difference being how they engage for off-the-line performance. If you could program our cvt to have an initial engagement of 3k rpm then it would drastically improve the 0-60 times. Or have some sort of load-sensing adjustment so that the cvt revs higher on hard launches...as it currently revs to roughly 2k at max off the line...makes for slow 0-30 times compared to a manual

 

Um, yes, a CVT is shifting! The point is that it is shifting continuously, and in infinitely small increments. Instead of shifting from 1st through 5th gear, it shifts from 1st through infinity (but limited by the highest effective gear).

For example, suppose you accelerate from a standstill and continue to accelerate until the car approaches redline (somewhere in the ballpark of 30 MPH???).

In an MT car you will have to shift into 2nd gear. Engine RPM will drop by a rather large increment (from 6,500 RPM down to maybe 4,500???). Unfortunately, this shift from 1st gear (ratio=3.538) to 2nd gear (ratio=1.913) means a 45% reduction in torque to the wheels Not much choice though; you can't increase RPM forever.

In a CVT, in theory, once you accelerate to some point approaching redline, the car can reduce the gear ratio in very small increments. So, instead of going straight from 3.538 to 1.913, it could go from 3.538 to 3.4, 3.3, 3.2, 3.1, etc. (I'm not sure what the exact numbers are for the CVT.) Anyway, higher gear ratios mean more torque. You therefore keep more torque over a longer period of time with the CVT. In theory, this means that the CVT has the potential to be a faster car than the MT. By the way, using the paddle shifts negates this advantage by making the car use discrete shift points, like the MT.

Here's a fairly ignorant question: Does the CVT use a torque converter like a regular automatic transmission? If so, there's a loss in torque right there. If there is a torque converter, then that would be a disadvantage to the CVT.

I wish I could speak more empirically than theoretically, but I don't have access to both MT and CVT cars, nor do I have access to a test facility, timing equipment, dynamometer, etc. However, it seems that most of us agree that the MT accelerates better than the CVT. My stopwatch pretty consistently tells me low 8's to 60 in my MT. So, something is limiting the performance of the CVT: a torque converter??? crappy computer programming???

Anyway, "adding gears to" or changing the shift points of the paddle-shift mode of the CVT shouldn't do much or any good. In automatic mode the car is capable of all ratios between some minimum and maximum values. (Note that the range of gear ratios is different for the CVT than the MT, but when you factor in the final drive ratio the range of gears for the CVT and MT are about the same.)

 

ah ok, its just like a CVT on a go kart but bigger, and more advanced

so you can launch with a snow mobile? how can that work on the lancer,

 

http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=fNd0gAkay5o

 

wow that sucks but I had to laugh haha.

this one is good too
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=7wwesYWsa88&NR=1

 

http://youtube.com/watch?v=4kNtFu9kbEY&feature=related

interesting vid!

as is this one
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Bb4zdcD0G-Y

 

WT6MA.

Those have been out for a while. They're actually listed in the video thread in the engine forum (Yeah, I know the CVT isn't engine related, but I only have one 08 video thread... )

 

I agree. I am a new MT driver but I don't think its so hard to understand that even when the engine is revving at 3k for example it doesn't mean that it's using the same amount of gas as accelerating at 3k. The throttle body is not open anyway. + When the clutch is in you can control the speed using engine braking.

BUT DON'T PUT IT IN NEUTRAL. First you have no control over the car if something happens and second I think it's illegal doing so.

 

^yes its illegal

 

I haven't had a chance to practice engine braking with mine (still learning stick). So what I was told (and what I've been doing so far), is just keeping it in gear while I'm braking. When the RPM's get low enough (around 1 to 1.5 ish), that's when I put it into neutral. By that time, I'm only a couple seconds away from coming to a full stop.