1990 Subaru Justy 4WD 5-door from North America - Comments

A/C probably needs to be charged, never worked.

Ignition is flawed. Installed a new one, had the same problem as the first.

Have to wiggle the key like crazy to start it sometimes. It always started!

Smoked... probably a gasket problem.

Started revving at 55,000 miles... assume the transmission was going out.

Automatic transmissions are $2000 to $3000 to fix, car was worth $1400.

I sold the car rather than fix it.

It never broke down on me.

Great 4WD for a snowy mountain town.

Could parallel park it ANYWHERE.

Drove like a go-cart, but only took as much gas as one.

Seat belts had a recall.

Great gas mileage.

Looks great with a ski rack.

Had it for 6 years and only put in gas and oil.

Sold it when the transmission started to go out... a sad day for me.

Steven:

It probably wasn't the transmission... more likely the brushes on the electric clutch (or water in the wires to the brush set).

The ECVT in ours has been without failure... except for the brushes. The car is driven over a steep mountain pass almost daily and the only maintenence that has been done is changing the ATF every year (you can drain out only about half the fluid at a time).

Trouble is, no one who services automatics seems to be able to understand CVT's... but that is changing now that Honda, Nissan and others are introducing them into their automobiles.

When the brushes failed on our Justy, we had one idiot (at an authorised Subaru Service Center, no less!) try to tell me that "the frictions in the gearbox had failed" and when I told him it didn't have frictions with which to fail, I was told that I didn't know what I was talking about. Eventually, I convinced him to call Subaru and after a terse conversation with the Subaru National Service Manager, he came back very red faced, ordered and then replaced the brushes (that are located under the starter) and quickly sent me on my way!

Needless to say, I've not been back and have found another Service Centre who are interested and seem to know something about these strange Dutch invented transmissions.

There are only two known types of CVT's... Van Doorn (which is what the Justy has) invented in the 1940's which works with a belt that runs in compression between two pulleys of variable diameter. And the other is Perbury-Hayes, invented in 1903, which British Leyland in recent years, spent a fortune developing before they fell to pieces. They called their version of the Perbury-Hayes transmission, Totorotor: which works with rollers running around a dish (the original patent was for rollers running around and up and down a leather encased cone). The pity is that totorotor seems to have vanished into the ether (killed by BMW?). I understand that the development was mostly complete; that they had trucks running with them on test and also in front wheel-drive Rovers. My understanding is that the Van Doorn transmission is better suited to lower powered vehicles and Totorotor in high power/high torque situations.

I'm told the Hawker Harrier Jump Jet uses a totorotor to drive it's alternator...

Regards,

Mike Glover

@Tairua

New Zealand.