I drive a 2006 Ford Five Hundred with a continuously variable transmission. It has ~67k miles on it. It had 45k miles on it when I bought it, used, a little over 2 years ago. I’ve never done anything for it except oil changes–every 5k miles or so, whenever the oil meter gets around 0%.
When I start my car after it’s been sitting for 8+ hours, it sounds normal in park and has a resting rpm of about 700 (iirc). Then when I shift into drive or reverse, the engine will rev up for a few seconds to about 1300rpm, then come back down to 700 after a few seconds. It feels like the car is bumping (like something is… turning over, under the hood, is the best way to describe it), but it’s standing still. I’ve never changed gears while the car is in motion, I’m always very careful to come to a complete stop before going from reverse to drive.
Once the car has been driven for a few miles, this behavior stops (the rpms are always steady at 700 when I get home from work and shift gears a few times to test it). Should I be concerned?
I probably shouldn’t be allowed to own a car because I know so little about them, and maintenance schedules or whatever. I dunno. I’ve heard that the transmission on this car is more likely to go out than average. If the transmission goes out before it’s paid off, I’d likely have to default on my loan because there’s no way I could afford a repair of that magnitude.