2014 Nissan X-TRAIL Pricing and Specs

If you mean shuddering and vibration when you take off from rest, then you’re possibly experiencing the same problem that many owners of this model Nissan have already reported. The problem is caused by wear in the CVT transmission which is allowing the steel drive belt to slip. As the belt slips and grips and then slips again, the driver experiences less-than-smooth acceleration.

The safety recalls (which were actually technical service bulletins) you’re referring to all occurred within the North American market and haven’t been extended to Australian X-Trails (that I know of). Unfortunately, US consumer law is quite different from ours and consumers have very different rights and obligations.

It would be worth having the car assessed and then approaching Nissan Australia’s customer service department to see if there’s any help on offer. But given the age of the vehicle, I wouldn’t be holding my breath. That said, I totally understand your point of view, and 11 years is probably not a suitable lifespan for a modern automatic transmission, given we’ve been making cars for more than 130 years, and Nissan (in one form or another) for the last 90 of those.

The engines in the 2014 X-Trail were tuned by Nissan to run perfectly on 91 RON unleaded petrol. That means that if you use the more expensive Premium ULP available (95 or 98 RON) you’ll basically be wasting money. That’s because an engine that isn’t tuned for the Premium brew won’t run any better or use less fuel on PULP.

The other bit of good news is that your vehicle is also compatible with ethanol-blended petrol. That means, you can fill up from the E5 or E10 pump at the service-station and maybe save a few cents per litre in the process.

The CVT transmission in the X-Trail has caused plenty of owners problems over the years. Jerking or shuddering is usually down to one of two things: Either the metal belt inside the transmission which provides the drive is worn and is slipping, or; the transmissions valve body is faulty and needs replacement. Either way, it’s a fairly major repair.

But what you haven’t told me for certain is that your car is, indeed, a CVT-equipped example. In the off-chance that your car has the much rarer conventional manual transmission, then the problem is more likely to be something wrong with the engine that is causing the problem at a particular engine speed (2000rpm in your case). Changing the plugs is a decent first step, but in the longer term, you’ll have more success by having the vehicle scanned and seeing what fault codes are thrown up by the car’s computer.