Greetings from Hungary.
I see many owners of the Punto Speedgear (with CVT gearbox) get this problem, but nobody wrote a solution so far, so I'm here to do it.

At first, my Punto had a hard time engaging D, or L, or 1st, anything that is forward, while it worked instantly and seamlessly in reverse. Then it got worse. It often took minutes for the car to switch into D. Finally, it reached the point where it would not switch into D at all, even after half an hour of profound cursing.:bang:

I took my car to several automatix gearbox specialists, but most of them could not identify what exactly was broken or what should be fixed or replaced. Only one place out of five was able to do it.

Here's the problem exaplained, the way they said:
There is a hydraulic control unit that is part of the gearbox itself, but reaching or fixing it does not require disassembling the main part of the gearbox, wich is good.
Inside this hydraulic control unit there are pistons that "push" the oil. The oil then pushes some disks together to engage forward or reverse drive.
This piston did not work anymore. It was letting the oil flow right beside it, unable to "push" the oil.
They reaplced some parts related to these pistons, and now my car finally works great.:worship:

It wasn't cheap, but it was still worth it. Replacing the whole gearbox would have cost twice the price of a used car of this type. What they did cost 1/3 of the price of such a used car. It's still very expensive, but well worth it if you still like your little stepless automatic Punto.

I hope this is useful information for someone. I might take some pictures of the old parts they returned. There's still messy with oil, and I live in an apartement, so it might be diffcult....
Cheers.:slayer:

Dear Innuendo1231,
I know that it has been almost two years since your message was posted. Thank you for the information. I am having the same problem. It would be nice if you could share the pic, if it's still being kept.
Thanks.

luqluq said:

Dear Innuendo1231,
I know that it has been almost two years since your message was posted. Thank you for the information. I am having the same problem. It would be nice if you could share the pic, if it's still being kept.
Thanks.

Click to expand...

Innuendo1231

I will try to find it!

Appreciate for the effort!

Dear Dear Innuendo1231,

I enclosed here the pic of the CVT gearbox. are you referring to Item 7, the piston inside the hydraulic mechanism. Does it require special/piston replacement of parts or just rubber seals to make it right?

Thank you.

Dear Fiat fans, I read with interest these posts, since I'm dealing with the same problem. Now, in that hydraulic block there are actually 4 pistons. I replaced the sealings on all of them, but this didn't seem to solve the problem. My bet now is the gears seeker, which is another set of 2 smaller pistons linked together and moved via linkages by the gear selector in the cockpit. Can you provide more details about what happened at the repair shop? What they actually did there?

Older thread..
luqluq
dave

So the dreaded cvt won't go forward at all, despite taking it apart, checking it inch by inch, replacing sealings, nada! Now since i don't want to scrap the car 'cause it's in a very good condition (fairly new I must say) I'm thinking converting to a manual transmission. Any thoughts? Thanks!