Saturn Ion issue..... CVT?

My girlfriend has an Ion coupe with the CVT. It's begun acting weird - when it's hot, the car is extremely sluggish when accelerating from a stop up to about 20 mph, holding about 2500rpm but with no power, then it suddenly kicks in and GOES. Sometimes lifting off the accelerator at that point causes the car. Go where with acceleration for about 2-3 seconds.

When the car is cool, the surge can still happen, but without the lack of power. I don't know if this is a software issue, a valve body issue ( if this transmission even has a valve body), or some sort of speed sensor. Does anyone here have any experience in this area? Or does anyone know of a Saturn specialist in the Atlanta area?

 Mike

Miles on the vehicle?

I'm not familiar with the E36 M3ty cvt, but am well versed in that these cars kill catalysts like its going out of style.

130k on the car. I'm not familiar with any cat issues with Saturns having an Ecotec motor?

In reply to racer33:

Catalysts plug up.... and in my experience, caused something similar to this on my redline. It would hang at 2-2500rpm and rarely make power over that. I thought the s/c snout had thrown up the ghost.

With a CVT, it could always be the E36 M3ty belt drive in it. Several cvt's are "sealed" meaning unrebuildable.

The Ion/Vue CVT is a boat anchor at best. They generally die around 100k, so I'd say you got some bonus miles out of that turd. Oh, and they're about $2k used, so I wouldn't even want to know how much a new or rebuilt unit would be. You can swap the non-CVT into it, but it's a bit involved.

If it's the trans, I'm hoping to find someone that will swap the ion sedan trans into it. It's beyond my comfort zone (and free time) to do that. The belt is still intact, because the car still moves. It's not likely the cat - wouldn't explain the surging, and usually the car runs and revs fine.

have never replaced a cat on an ecotec that didn't die from the root cause of a weak ignition cassette, causing misfire, and the owner continued to drive while raw gas went out the exhaust.

130k on the car. I'm not familiar with any cat issues with Saturns having an Ecotec motor?

most of them have been cured by now. i wouldn't sweat it.

that hungarian built POS they called a transmission, however....

belteshazzar wrote: have never replaced a cat on an ecotec that didn't die from the root cause of a weak ignition cassette, causing misfire, and the owner continued to drive while raw gas went out the exhaust.

Perhaps the redlines were the problem, they all ran pig rich straight from GM. But I agree somethings wonky with the trans if it only does it every now and then.