Bought a brand new '06 C230 last June. Overall we have been pretty happy with the performance and styling of the car although I am having occasional issues with very hard, jerky, downshifting. It has happened about a dozen times total, the first about 6 months ago and again just this past weekend. It always seems to occur in sport mode (we never really drive it in comfort mode and we hardly ever use the manual shifting) and when its shifting from
2-1 ( I think) or possibly 3-2. I am pretty mechanical with cars and the first time it happened, it jerked so violently that I was certain that something had to have happened in the tranny and that there would be damage. Later that same day, I drove it in manual shift to see if I could feel any shudder, hear any noises or duplicate it but nothing more happened and it was smooth. I took it in to the dealer for a seperate issue not long after that (the driver seatbelt mechanism "ticking" and "clicking" driving us nuts!). They couldnt find anything wrong with the tranny nor did they say this is how MB's are (this is our very first one) however all I was told was that they would look for a code. This is a bit concerning since it seems to me that any loose metal shavings in the tranny would prob. not signal a code of any kind but I could be wrong. This past weekend, same thing happens with hard downshifts although it didnt seem as bad as a jerk/hard shift as the first time six months ago. it does seem a little strange to me that it happens all at once or is clustered on several downshifts and then seems to go away. It has always shifted very smooth on upshifts in both soft and harder driving. I have the car scheduled for its very first "A" service in about two weeks (10,200 miles on it) so I will mention it to the dealer again. I should probably add that my wife mostly drives the car and baby's it...if I use it on the weekends for a quick drive, I tend to drive it more aggressively. Has anyone else experienced this? Anything I should push the dealer on to look further? Thanks for adivising a new member!

 

This seems normal, me and my friends (Also W203 owners) have this...in fact...I forgot where I read it...but a couple car reviews on our cars say that the C230's have a somewhat "cheap auto tranny feel" to it and I am assuming they are talking about the hard downshifts....I hate the jerkiness of it all...I think a guy learning stick could sometimes drive smoother than the auto tranny in our cars can. hah...But the other times I feel jerkiness is when I slightly gas after releasing the gas pedal (say I want to slow down but not to the point where I need to brake). The car in this scenario jerks as if it cannot find the right gear to grasp on to...but then again I think this is normal. =(

 

I had the same problem and fixed it by having a newer transmission software (re-flash) installed. But I had the worst time ever to get them to do it.
Read the thread below:
https://mbworld.org/forums/c-class-w203/152259-harsh-7g-transmission-campaign-dealer-problems.html

 

Has anybody confirmed for the 06 C230SS, what that ticking / clicking sound is?? It's driving me nuts and I searched the forums with out any success.

Any help would be helpful.

Thanks!

 

If you're talking about the constant clicking sound from the engine...I heard it is the fuel injectors doing their job.