20k miles at Service B I complained of a stiff 1st and second gear. SO HBL of Northern VA decided that the best plan of action was to swap out the entire transmission.


Oh well. As long as I dont have to pay for it I dont care.


Any one else had this happen? How was the car after the fact?


I didnt ride the car very hard. The tires showed a bit of wear from some overly aggressive driving but that just happens some times. THe service rep mentioned this but said that it wasnt a huge deal.

how would you describe it as being stiff? is there any way to grease up the shifter to make it smoother?

I wish I could get my dealer to swap out my trans. It has sucked from day 1 but the MB rep says it is "normal". Yeh, normal for a 20 yr old John Deere.

My car has 18000+kms and it is still difficult to get it into 1st gear after a stop.
Annoying.

Try going into 2nd first. Works like a champ in most of the manuals I have tried.

~dnm

Thanks kodiak
I'll give it a try, but it's still sucks

FYI
Be careful of what you say to the Benz dealership or you may be in for a fight on who will pay. They can cause a fuss over the transmission if you implied to driving hard.

Glad someone is getting decent support for the worst 6spd known to man. Count me in as another dissatisfied 6spd owner.

Sorry about your problem, I did some research and that is why I went with the automatic, drives great.

The two C Classes that I've driven with the 6 speed were excellent. This of course includes the one we own (me + my old Dad).

Yours must have had a p*ss-poor shift action for the dealer to be willing to replace the unit.

I hope they know that the gearchange linkage is adjustable. That should have been tried first. Putting new guts in the car's drivetrain will not correct a poorly-adjusted gearshift linkage. Guess what - they're going to re-use the old shifter!

And I do have to ask how much Mercedes mechanics in N. America actually know about diagnosing problems with the 6 speed box. It's not been out that long, few are sold....I would have more confidence in their competence with an automatic box.

Good luck.

yea fixed my 6 sp by putting atf in it. works awesome now.

yeah its rediculously stiff from day 1 ... I had posted other stuff on here a long time ago about it and I got the concensus that it was a widespread problem so I didnt think to much of it. Its to the point now where to get it into first I have to shift 2nd->1st . And going from 1st -> 2nd if you miss it the first time you have to release the clutch and try again. its just like a syncro is locking out the stick.


Curious to see how it goes.

I have that exact issue and an additional bonus of horrific grinding on each gear change, too. Woo hoo! Maybe I should add a whistle to the tail pipe and really make it annoying.

I wouldn't say that, I've driven far worse, and its only the shift from 1-2 that I have a slight problem with.

As for the stiffness of getting into 1st gear at a stop... I have 3 comments:
1. I like the stiffness, makes me sure the car is in gear when I start going.
2. If you shift into first while still rolling by properly applying a slight pressure as the car slows, it pops into first quite easily. This is how its supposed to be done if you read some manual shifting techniques.
3. No offense, but how weak are those that complain? I mean, yes its hard, but with a good solid shifting motion its fine.

slcvr6, does yours grind on all gears or just the 1st-2nd? Mine is only a problem on 1st -2nd.

taylor, I've driven worse too, but they were 30 yr old cars. Matter of fact, my 30 yr old TR8 shifts better than my new MB. Go drive an Acura RSX, 350Z, BMW 3xx, and you will see that MB has a long way to go if they want to compete with cars in this class. As I've said before, it is a very mediocre transmission. If you get a bad one like some of us have, it becomes a really dissappointing transmission and ruins the enjoyment of the car.

It often has nothing to do with the shifter. The synchronizers are junk. How do they diagnose this? They pull the drain plug and metal shavings come out in the fluid. Pretty cut and dried.

They do have a shifter issue as well and my dealer replaced the trans and updated the shifter at the same time. Or so they say:p

MB did as much as they could to coerce me into an automatic. The dealers in my area won't stock a 6 spd car and tell prospective customers that nobody wants one. They have a junk 6 spd and they know it.

What we have here is an example of MB's success at doing this (indirectly in this case) to thier customers, very sad, MB gets many of thier customers to settle for something they don't want *and* pay $1300 extra on an expensive entry level car because they can't provide a (50+ year old technology) good synchronised manual trans.

My personal opinion (after driving an auto for a week while mine was repaired) other than just puttsing around thier auto sucks. The only thing it does good is downshift easily, it upshifts whenever it wants regardless of what mode it's in or what input the driver puts in. (i.e. you click it up a gear and no shift till it's darn good and ready) I was unimpressed. Of course just everyday driving it was very nice indeed- but in this car the performance mode needs a tune up.

It started out as 1-2 only and the dealer finally drained some fluid and found it was overfilled and had some shavings in it. Since that occurred, it now grinds on every shift once the car has been shifted more than 5 times. The dealer has failed to get the issue resolved, so the car has now been sitting for 2 months+, undriven. If it continues to sit, it will be sold and someone else will get my business.

For a car I ordered, paid sticker for and loaded with pretty much every option, it is a major disappointment. Major.

Troll Alert !!

My thoughts exactly.

slcvr6, have you called the MB 800# and complained? They will set up an appt for the MB rep to drive the car. The problem in my case is that they never drive the car for more than a few miles. So if it doesn't act up right away, they say there is nothing wrong. Make the service manager drive it home one night so he can see how bad it is.

Well mine goes back in next week. Had the trans. done at 12000km and am still having a problem now at 20000km. After I talked to the shop forman last week, I was told that there was a damaged bushing in the linkage. They needed to special order the tool to align it after replacing the linkage. Glad that I already had an appointment setup for this week as my check engine light just came on, called the dealer, and was told, "this is a really minor light", oh well, the car seems to break and be in the shop about every 3 weeks. Sigh...

Are you sure this is the reason? It may be if they have had a lot of complaints about it. But usually they will sell you one anyway if that is what you want.

My dealer does not stock 6-spds either, but only because they don't sell very well. Everyone around here wants an auto. I would think they would push the auto just so they can sell you a car right away instead of ordering a 6-spd.

It is a catch 22- Of course they don't sell well if they don't stock them! My dealer in Atlanta stocks them, and doesn't seem to have trouble selling them. But he did say they had complaints from customers about the shift quality on the 6sp.

Just to further the debate, my ordering a manual vs. an auto has pushed my projected build from mid Feb to "sometime" in Apr for my 320Coupe!! According to dealer, "no earlier slots".

What's strange to me is that the apparent market segment (to my way of thinking) for the coupe should be skewed rather heavily to manual tranny types of buyers; ergo, the auto should be the scarce critter at the dealers.

Yeah, that's true. But people don't really ask for them very often either. We do stock some. I think we have one 230 coupe right now and one 230 sedan with 6-spd's, but there isn't much interest in these cars.