2015 Forester purchase advice - CVT concern

[Mike05]

Hi all,
I'm looking at a 2015 Forester with 155k miles at a dealer. It has had one owner, fantastic carfax with Subaru dealer maintenance but one thing is missing .... no CVT fluid change! Even the service manager where it was serviced was surprised when I called to inquire about the history that it was never done and expressed concern with purchase, but now I see why it was not done - the maintenance schedule only shows "Inspect" every 30k and my understanding is that part of that may have been Subaru's extension of the CVT warranty through 100k and didn't want folks messing with it. Yet, the severe service schedule (which I think most prudent vehicle owners should be following) indicates fluid replacement every 24855 miles.

Inquiries to several independent shops and even transmission places have pretty much advised against purchase. One said Subaru had the most problems with the CVT during this time span - better CVT's than Gen 1 but still not great. They all felt failure will occur soon even if it is a valve body, or full transmission failure and the repair route is using a reman CVT from Subaru at 6k parts alone. However, I wanted to ask on a dedicated Subaru owner forum to see what experience folks have had with these transmissions and their recommendations as to further consider this car or move on. One option would be to buy an extended warranty through any number of after market warranty companies.

Thanks in advance for any input/advice.

 

[bmart]

155k miles CVT, even with the service done, is highly suspect. i'd move on, or get the price down to where it covers the CVT swap...because you're going to need one.

 

[keith3267]

No problem. The 24,855 interval is for vehicles that do a lot of towing. The reason for the 100,000 extended warranty was for a defective solenoid and valve assembly that some transmissions got. Mine had that and they replaced the valve body under warranty. That was the reason why Subarus had issues during that time frame, not for the rest of the transmission.

It is a real pain but you can get the transmission checked for condition. I did mine one time after the valve body was replaced and it looked brand new. That was around 100k miles.