twinttsvr4

Was driving home from the beach just now. After driving about 2 min on the strip i realized the car wasnt shifting out of gear. i tried to manually shift the car but it did nothing. i pulled into a parking lot and shut the car hoping it was just a random software error. started it back up and put the car in reverse, it went no where. had to rev the engine to get it to back up. put it in drive and started going. same thing, just staying in gear, not upshifting. then the check engine light turned on. pulled over again a little further down the street. popped the hood because im hearing a bad whine too and not sure if its coming from the trans or the supercharger. started it back up and it was working fine. ran through all the gears. stopped at a light, started going again and same issue. figured im only a few miles from my house so why not drive it 30 mph home. after about a mile it felt like the trans slipped completely into neutral. i would give it gas, it would rev and the speed would drop. so i pulled over ever 5 min, shut the car, waited a few minutes. would start it again and drive a little more. did this the whole 4 miles to my house. the car just rolled 100k miles. has anyone had a problem like this before? did my transmission just completely go on me? the other thing i noticed is when i put the car into drive it would clunk each time on this mile mile trip. please let me know if anyone has any experience with this?

TemjinX2

pull the codes man. That will be the best way of going about it.

twinttsvr4

cant do that till tomorrow...hoping this was a slightly common problem that i just didnt know about

TemjinX2

the range is kinda huge with out seeing the codes. You could have a dying cps sensor.

The transmission connector brushing could be bad and leaking tranny fluid into the connector. The leaking brushing could cause the fluid to leak into the tcu causing the tcu error codes.

If you still have the old valeo radiator. It could've leaked coolant into the transmission and destroyed the tq converter and clutch packets.

Hence why i said you need the codes. It can be as cheap as a $45 cps sensor or a as expensive as a new tranny.

twinttsvr4

had one of my techs run a short test on the car, this is what we found:

present in dme
p0700 transmission control system malfunction
p0715 input/turbine speed sensor circuit malfunction

present in egs
p2502
p220a
p2315
p2300
p2600

any information would be helpful before we go digging into this thing or before MB parts dept closes

twinttsvr4

looks like the p2200 is limp mode,
2315 is an etc message kilometer reading from control unit a1 inst cluster no on CAN bus

loudandheard

I see that you have a 2002, check and see if you have a valeo radiator. I think you can check by looking at the corners of the radiator and look at the side facing the engine. I really hope it's just a sensor or control module, but if you have a valeo then it could be a lot worse.

If it's a bad tranny I would see if renntech rebuilds transmissions. I know they do an upgrade, but I'm not sure what it consists of.

twinttsvr4

well judging from the faults and when we cleared them, the car runs perfectly fine, im going to guess its more towards the side of the electric hydraulic valve body and pilot bushing. i called a friend at mercedes and he thinks this is it also judging from whats going on with the car and what we've found. does this sound right to anyone? im going to be tearing into it a little more after 5 o clock, but already had the valve body, bushing, oil, pan gasket and filter delivered here just in case.

TemjinX2

i would check your tcu unit and make sure there's no tranny fluid on the harness. Some times the leaky bushing can cause the fluid to leak into the tcu and cause errors.

I heard of the valve body going bad in w203's but not in the c32 unless it was from glcyol contamination.

twinttsvr4

temjinx2- what would you inspect to find the culpret? im going to be pulling the car in the shop in a few minutes and would really like some leads

TemjinX2

the tcu, it located under the front passenger side carpet. You'll see a metal plate, it located on the other side of the metal plate. you can follow th tcu harness to the insulation. If its leakying, it'll turn part of the tcu insulation red.

You can also check the tcu connector to the tranny. There was a tsb for the tcu connector bushing going bad.

The first part only takes 5min to check. The second part, you will need to jack up the car.

twinttsvr4

well we have the car on the lift and dropped the trans pan and found alot of metal...no coolant but alot of metal shavings....dont know what to do at this point. hes going through with putting in a new filter and fluid. and changing the connector and we will see if fluid flowed to the tcu but hes telling me im going to need a transmission with that much metal in the pan

twinttsvr4

connector was full of fluid too

TemjinX2

clean the transmission connector with electric contact cleaner. Check the other side of the harness on the tcu side to make sure there's no fluid.

There's metal shavings from when the transmission first was being broken in. The original owner probably never changed the original transmission fluid since mercedes said it was life time fluid.

There's no real way of checking to see if there's coolant in the tranny fluid unless you do a glycol test.

The mercedes transmissions are very robust, especially the ones on the c32 and e55. But if your on the original valeo radiator, i would change it asap to a behr. The valeos are known to leak. Glycol will kill your tranny.

But clean the connectors and replace the bushing and go from there.

twinttsvr4

ok wheres the fill for this transmission??

twinttsvr4

and he wants to know what the fill procedures are if anyone knows them

TemjinX2

its under the passenager side air box. There's a diy on w203 forum.

https://mbworld.org/forums/c-class-w...ml#post2739493

loudandheard

I'm so worried about my transmission. I'm sure it's never been serviced and I'm close 140k miles. Let us know how it goes and try to see if you can document the procedure.

twinttsvr4

well all i have to say is the car is running great. we took the valve body apart. cleaned out every scrap of metal, every solenoid, every channel. replaced the oil, filter, conductor plate, and socket sleeve(pilot bushing). i forgot how smooth the car used to shift years ago. and while i do miss the mean shifting it had which reminded me of my old fox body mustang, this thing feels great. the fluid didnt wick its way all the way to the tcu.

loudandheard

Good to hear that every thing came out ok. Did you do it yourself and how difficult was it? Were the parts expensive and what were the part numbers?

twinttsvr4

i had a bmw master tech doing it while i assisted. i cant quote exact prices as i got them at cost from mercedes but i think list was around 350 in parts. and i would not have known what i was doing in this thing. and ive torn down my fair share of engines, built custom turbo applications and am a fairly experience fabricator( thank you SAE formula 1 team in college lol)

the parts dept at mb knew exactly what i needed before i even finished explaining
but the parts are as follows:
electro-conductor plate for valve body
pilot bushing-this is what mb calls it but its a tcu wiring sleeve in most others
dot 9 trans fluid, depending on if your doing a flush or just a fill you will need between 9 and 5 bottles. i was told to never flush the trans if you havent been doing it since 30k mark because it will just cause problems.
transmission filter
trans pan gasket
ridiculous amount of brake clean and electronics contact cleaner

i think i could handle this now after seeing it done but he took apart the valve body to put the conductor plate on. this looked pretty complex and i would suggest taking pictures before dissassembly.

loudandheard

Did you get any part numbers?

So the transmission is a lot smoother now? Do you still have the jerking at around 2k rpm? Is the transmission more responsive under full throttle?

moosejaw

I would love to fix this in my car
its hard to explain to a car buyer when during a test drive......
"Oh the car shifts hard that way and no one has a fix for it"

loudandheard

That's why I plan on keeping my car forever. The car is not worth selling after having a 100k miles, I will never recoup the money I spent on the car. I would rather make it a fun project then get rid of it.

It's hard to let go

jturkel

when are/were you hearing the whine? during idle? or while accelerating? also, what did it sound like?

i currently have a whine that i notice while slowly accelerating...kind of low pitched and i think it might be coming from the trans....i might be crazy but i swear i feel the slightest vibration in my shifter during this.