I have a 2012 Lancer SE with a CVT. I understand that it’s delicate and can’t handle much power. But how much is too much? The Nissan Maxima pushes around 300 hp with a CVT. Although those are the newer ones and I can’t get a definitive answer if they’ve upgraded the reliability. I want to keep this car, but I want a little bit more power, at least 200hp, but not over 300. The previous owner straight piped it and put a new open air intake in it. I’m not opposed to mainly working on the appearance of the car. But I would like to know if there are some steps I can take to get a little more power.

 

So I am in a very similar situation with a 2013 Lancer. My plan is simply to save up money to swap to a manual transmission. I had briefly considered a slightly crazy plan of trying to find one of the older automatic transmissions and splicing that in but I did some research into the wiring harness differences and that's just beyond my capability of trying to do.

So instead I am going to continue my studies into the wiring harnesses and their differences and see if I can get away with adapting a CVT wiring harness to a manual transmission once I go to install it after my transmission finally kicks the bucket.

In case you don't want to do that here are my suggestions:

Install a transmission cooler in front of your AC condenser. This will ensure that the transmission stays cool and this is something that I plan to do because the primary issue with cvts is heat. CVT transmissions are sensitive to two things: heat and dirty fluid. My mechanic highly suggests changing the fluid between 20,000 miles or anytime that you get a transmission overheat light which for me has already happened once so I am going to change everything aggressively in order to prevent damage. @Playboy