Just curious, the highest gear I can shift to is 6 on my C350, why is it advertised as 7-speed automatic transmission?

 

have you counted th "d" gear ?

 

because it has seven gears

 

The number of forward gears in the transmission doesn't necessarily match the indicated gear positions on the shifter.

 

D is 7.

 

So D is 7, hmm....as I saw a C63 video on youtube that it actually displays 7th gear on the odometer.

 

Do YOU have a C63? Well, there's you answer then.

 

The gear number as displayed on the instrument panel is the highest gear the trans will upshift to. When D is displayed, it will upshift to 7th because you have not controlled it to do otherwise.

 

my car is a c230, it came sport from europe, in the transmission it have 3 letters ... the C,S,M.

in the C and S it only have 6 speed
but in the M mode it has 7

i dont know if the american version come like that but i think your car have to be paddle shift to have the 7 speed transmision

 

7-speeders may or may not have paddle shifters depending on where sold. There is no technical requirement one way or the other.

 

tiptronic works differently with mercedes.... the number it says is really the number of gears you are allowing the car to shift up to. for example if you stop and leave the car in D3 and begin moving, you are allowing the car to shift automatically from 1st or 2nd gear to 3rd gear, then the car will not shift unless you shift upward. it says this until D6 which means you are limiting the car to the first 6 gears. then D itself means you are allowing the car to shift through all 7 gears. A C63 displays all 7 gears because it actually has an M(Manual) mode, where regular C300/350s only have S mode or C mode.

 

The 2010 C300 shows D7 in the instrument cluster

 

Do you have AAP? In Manual mode it should show D7, but I haven't tried all the modes yet since I'm still at 600 miles lol.

 

2 reverse gears as well

 

My 2009 C350 does not show D7 in the cluster. It goes from D1-D2-D3-D4-D5-D6-D

However the 2010 C300 shows D1-D2-D3-D4-D5-D6-D7-D.

 

Besides the fact that it is a seven speeds with two overdrives, and two reverse speeds, it naturally engages six. In "C" mode starts in second and gets to seventh; in "S" mode starts in first and gets to sixth. When you lower or raise gears by hand, it goes to the gear selected as described in the owner's manual. The same, when you floor the gas pedal it goes to the best passing gear according to speed.

This makes obvious that the most economical way to use the car is in "C" mode, and the "S" mode is the way to reach maximum speed faster though maximum torque is not reached till passing 2500 rpm.

Since we are talking about a Mercedes, I'd say the way to drive it is the way you enjoy it the most.

Cheers, JV.

 

Great info just wanted to add if you are in C (which starts in 2nd gear) and you mash the pedal it will downshift to first.

 

No, in S mode it goes from 1 to 7. C can also engage 1 if you manually shift it into 1st using the lever.

 

Dude what are you talking about. D is D7...just like in about every other car with "manual" shift.

 

What is the source of this information?

If this were true, the RPMs in top gear at hwy speed would have been different between "C" and "S". They are not, at least in my car.

 

I thought "c" just starts in 2nd gear and shifts a bit earlier than "s"

I just hate that the car always starts off in "c" I always forget to switch it.

 

All of you with misinformation need to look at the freakin manual. It's all explained there. C starts in 2 unless you mash the medal then it kicks to 1....as stated in the manual.

 

i have paddle shift
and i have 7 speed in my odometer
i have c230

 

Doesn't the paddle shift work differently than regular auto trans?

I thought paddle shift allows to select a specific gear while the regular auto trans (tapping the shifter lever) only limits the transmission so that it does not go above certain gear.

 

There's gotta be a way to change that in the ECU programming... somebody just has to figure it out.