Impressed with Dodge Caliber

We have had a Dodge Caliber SXT for one month now, having traded in a
2005 PT Cruiser Convertible, and are very impressed with the quality
and gas mileage of the vehicle. We have never gotten below 25 and so
far have almost gotten 30 on a short trip to Kennedy Space Center.
The car is very tightly built, we love the CVT smooth shifting and the
cruise control keeps it around 1500-2000 rpms at all time, accounting
for the good mileage. The last Dodge that I owned was a 70 Dart
Swinger, 225 Slant six, the other cars being Chryslers. My family has
owned Chrysler cars since the 1940's, and I own a 1940 restored Royal
coupe. I have heard many good things about the Caliber, but I wonder
why the name Dodge is nowhere to be found on the car?

 

"CVT" and "Shifting" (no matter how smooth) don't belong in the same
sentence. Is it true that the Caliber CVT "fakes" shifts rather than
just holding the RPM constant as speed increases? And if so, have you
checked into the rumor that the controller can be re-flashed to make it
*really* be a CVT?

 

CVT's, those things are like big snow-mobile clutches......

 

Many people "expect" to fee some sort of "shifting activity" in their
transmissions, whether CVT or not. CVTs also take a little getting used
to in driving them, as some of our Nissan techs had to instruct Murano
customers of how to drive the vehicles to let the CVT act as it should.
A steady throttle foot during acceleration keeps things going as they
should, rather than into and out of the throttle as some people tend to
do when "the feel" is not right to them.

Even Nissan has "gear" selections in their CVTs, to mimic certain gear
ratios for manual shifting capabilities. Not everybody is ready for (or
used to) the ole DynaFlow feel of smoooooth acceleration with little
engine rpm change.

I suspect that Chrysler's foray into CVTs will work better than
GM/Saturn's and Ford's did. Nissan's had full CVT coverage for a couple
of model years now, but not in the more powerful Infinity line. It
doesn't seem to have hurt sales or have received consumer resistance,
especially as it is now billed as a fuel economy booster.

Enjoy!

C-BODY

 

The couple I've tested held a constant rpm with a constant throttle setting.
Some models do, however, have an "autostick" setting which allows them to be
manually shifted through 6 speeds.

I think they work great if properly set up. Plus they have far fewer parts
than any other types of transmission, manuals included.

 

You will have to resist resisting change.
CVT is the way of the future, it just makes sense.

 

You COMPLETELY boofed your understanding of what I was saying. Read it
again, with feeling.

My whole point was that its looney to take a perfectly good CVT (which I
agree is the way of the future apart from hybrids) and then program it
to "shift" like a regular automatic just so customers won't think it
"feels odd."

 

Ha. Not if Chrysler has their way. Dual clutch, here it comes:

http://www.allpar.com/corporate/auto-manual-transmission.html

 

Current CVTs can't handle as much torque as conventional automatics or
manuals, but "manumatics" may just be a stopgap for heavier duty
vehicles until higher torque-capable CVTs are developed. Then again,
automatically shifting manual transmissions have been used for a long,
long time on 18-wheelers. I was skeptical the first time I was shown an
Eaton auto-manual on an 18-wheeler. I'd heard the driver pull it in, and
it sounded exactly like a conventional 18-wheeler shifting. But it was
all being done by the computer, not the driver, and he proved it to me
by taking me for a turn around the compound in it. Very odd sensation to
feel the engine drop to idle, hear the gears change, and then the power
come back on without the driver moving a muscle. This was circa 1998,
and it was a Freightliner with a Cummins N-14 and Eaton transmission and
axles.

 

You're confusing the future with the present. CVTs aren't there yet
for serious torque output -- I don't think Chrysler is using it for
anything bigger than a 2.4? While I expect them to get there, I also
expect it to take long enough that a new transmission family can be
developed, produced, amortized, and regarded as "old" first.

 

I've see it. More complexity, but useful for high power large vehicles.

 

I got your point, but what's wrong with shift points?
You appear CVT negative, with negative feeling.

 

He said what's wrong with shift points in a CVT quite clearly: you're
compromising the CVT -- the whole purpose of which is to better match
the ratio to the engine than you can do with any number of separate
gear ratios -- to provide an artificial feeling for customers who
don't understand what's going on.

How exactly do you get from "the way of the future" to "negative"?

 

The whole idea of a CVT is to let the engine get to an optimum RPM for
the power demand, and let it STAY at that RPM until the power demand
changes. For example, merging on the freeway, the engine revs up to near
its power peak, and stays there as the vehicle accelerates, with the
CVT changing ratio so that it progressively gets closer to 1:1 but the
engine speed doesn't vary. Then when you're at cruise speed, the CVT
lets the engine RPM drop to a high-efficiency RPM while holding the
vehicle speed constant. By putting in shift points, you make it act
just like any old automatic would- engine revs up, and then lugs back
down to a sub-optimum RPM and has to dig itself out of the hole all over
again.

No, I LIKE CVTs.... provided that they're allowed to do what they're
best at and not have "fake" shift points to make them feel like a
regular automatic.