Hi there, I live in Peru and I desperately need some help with the way my automatic gearbox sometimes behaves.
I have had to drive my 2004 C240 elegance on a road at around 15,700 feet of altitude. I got to a small restaurant in the middle of this very isolated mountainous place where I parked the car. Afterwards when restarting it to continue my trip the gearbox would not function in any gear. The engine would normally rev and work but there would be no gears available to move the car. I managed to have it move in neutral on a downslope and after many miles and much less altitude and cold the gearbox would intermittently work having to turn the engine off, let it rest for a few minutes and restart it and get the gearbox to work for a little while. It would improve as I got to a lower altitude until normal when I reached about 10000 feet or less, where it again, worked flawlessly. The ESP signal is always on, by the way.
Please help. I have always considere Mercedes cars as extremely reliable but this issue looks very worrying and dangerous.
Any comment would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.