Honda GM says 10th gen Civic owners keep brake torque launching & blowing up their CVTs

If you want a better reaction time, do not brake torque your Civic and use Honda’s Brake Hold instead.

Honda makes some of the best Continuously Variable Transmissions (or CVTs) on the market today. But according to a VTEC.net site admin and a conversation he had with a Honda General manager, he’s seeing a rash of 10th gen Civics coming in with blown CVTs. When he poked into the matter, he found out that the one thing all these blown CVTs have in common is their owners tried brake torquing their Civics to get a better launch for drag racing, 0-60 run, etc.

Here’s the tweet from Temple of VTEC spelling out his conversation below.

Be kind to your CVT – they’re delicate.

Use the brake hold feature.

DON’T EVER BRAKE TORQUE!

— Temple of VTEC (@TempleofVTEC) May 15, 2020

While engineers make sure transmissions last the lifetime of the vehicle with several factors of safety baked in, CVTs aren’t made to withstand repeated temperature spikes thanks to CVT fluid heating too quickly without circulating.

Brake torquing involves holding your car in place with your brakes applied while simultaneously stomping on your accelerator, raising your engine RPMs. Civic owners with CVTs do this to eliminate CVT lag where the CVT takes a few seconds to recognize you want full power and adjusts the cones and gear ratios for maximum acceleration accordingly.

If you’ve never brake torqued a CVT, this is what it looks like on a Subaru. Again, never do this!

Holding your Civic at a standstill, especially when your Civic’s already at operating temperature, will build up a lot of heat in the CVT fluid. All that potential energy that would’ve been routed through the CVT is instead transferred to the fluid as heat.

It isn’t the torque these Civics can’t handle. Hondata infamously took a stock Civic with a factory CVT and used their +6 PSI flash tune to add +25 HP and +35 lb-ft to the wheels, raced that Civic for over six hours, and did a complete diagnosis of the CVT. As per their findings, the CVT suffered close to zero wear and tear, it looked brand new. This is a photo of the actual belt, post-race below.

This tweet recommends using the brake hold function. Brake Hold on Hondas means the parking brake is engaged with the vehicle stopped. While this doesn’t erase that CVT lag, this eliminates the milliseconds it takes to take your foot off the brake and transferring it to the accelerator. Brake hold does not put additional forces on your CVT and, when used in a launch, does not add further stress to your transmission.

Wrecking your CVT will cost you thousands of dollars. Unlike automatics where you can rebuild with new clutch discs and solenoids, damage to a CVT typically affects the entire unit.

Without a CVT, your Civic will become a very expensive paperweight. So, if you really want to launch your Civic, just use Brake Hold.