Sylviu22

Hello fellas,

I posted a while ago my persisstent issue with the jerky transmission on my C43.
Long story short, this occured in august 2020, the car suddenly behaves like an untamed bull. It doesnt matter if the TCU temp is on point, the shifts 4->3, 3->2 in Eco, Comfort Sport and Sport+ are stuttery, jerky and it feels like it is about to throw me out on the windshield. Sometimes the same happens on upshifts, and the symptoms are more pronounced when the car is cold, which is something normal, but they keep om going when the temps are high as well.
Ever since my first visit to service the car undergo the following:

-TCU oil change as the milage was 58000km and the time was about right; problem still there

- The “Brain” of the transmission, the block of valves is the word by word translation, dont know the actual name of it in English; problem persists

- at this point they took the tranny apart, piece by piece, changed one of the clutches, plus other orings and various things inside. Still the same.

- got my car for numerous adaptations and resets of parameters of the TCU

- on Monday some MB technician got some logs directly from the CAN

I am running out of patience and to be honest they told me some guy with a GLE43, same year and internals as my car had the same problem, they eventually changed the whole transmission and the issue was present.

So I am begging you to reach out and let me know if you encountered any of the above problems with your car, and if so, what was Daimler’s resolution?
I am not a mechanic, but my engineer gut tells me the problem could be elsewhere, unrelated to the transmission unit.

Appreciate it!
S

stockbmw

Any lemon law where you are from?

Sylviu22

Aaaa..huh?

AMGiggity

C43 Transmission is trash. The rodeo effect, jerking and even gear jumps from 9 to 5 exists in all cars, but to different levels. Some cars are terrible and exhibit all symptoms all the time and some cars just have the rodeo effect rarely, and the rest all in between. Your problems seem to be way more extensive than others. My guess is that some underlying issue is magnifying all other design flaws of this transmission. At this point you need to escalate this to MBUSA and ask them to make this right.

Sylviu22

You got my point precisely, the rodeo effect is what i am talking about. The only weird thing is prior to august 2020, the car did not behave like that. Or if it did, it was not this bad.

My issue is currently escalated to MB Germany, actually Daimler is the one who proposes resolutions, even the ones above, except the oil change. But seems they are too selfish right now to throw a new gearbox to me, and keep on patching this piece of **** that is currently mounted on my car.

I am still suspecting other parts being at fault, since so many parts have been changed transmission related, i guess a little progess should have been visible so far... but not even a minor improvement. Looks like Daimler is trash. For sure this is my first and last Mercedes.

superswiss

There are several threads complaining about the transmission in the C43. It seems that perhaps in an attempt by AMG to make it sportier while still sticking with a torque converter, they didn't quite do a proper job. For the C63 and all 63 models except the G wagon, AMG uses a different 9 speed transmission called the MCT that replaces the torque converter with a multi-plate startup-up wet clutch for a proper performance transmission that doesn't seem to suffer from any of these issues. The 9 speed in general is a good transmission, though. I just had a GLC 300 4MATIC loaner for 3 days while my C63 was in for service and it shifted butter smooth. The car itself was a different story as it drove like a loose diaper, bobbling and swaying like a sail boat, but other than that it drove smoothly. The standard 9 speed also starts in 2nd gear in Comfort mode I believe whereas all AMGs now start in 1st gear at least for 2019+ model years. That's something I prefer, but it might not be for everybody. Not sure what year yours is. BTW, the "brain" is called the mechatronic and consists of the control unit, solenoids and the valve body (that's the part with all the valves and the various channels for the hydraulic fluid). It's often just referred to as the valve body, because all automatic transmissions these days have a control unit and solenoids to perform gear shifts and clutch operations.

One aspect that has been brought up before is that these modern transmissions adapt to your driving style, so the shift quality can change over time depending on how you drive. Since you are in Germany, I'm assuming you take full advantage of the unrestricted Autobahn sections. I can tell you this, I took delivery of my C63 in Germany in May 2019 and drove around Europe for 2 months, doing a lot of high speed Autobahn driving. The result was that it drove less than smooth at lower speeds around town. For example it aggressively downshifted all the way to 1st when I came to a stop, which made things jerky. After the car arrived in the USA and I did more around town driving, it eventually adapted and became smoother and now no longer downshifts all the way to 1st gear. It only drops into 1st after I've come to a complete stop. So there are definitely aspects in these transmission that highly depend on how it adapts. Dealers can reset the adaptations, so it can start learning from scratch.

W205C43PFL

Removed as replied to wrong post.

W205C43PFL

It is resolved, thank you.

GWSHARK

@W205C43PFL tried to reply to your PM but says your profile doesn’t exist. Did you mean to send me request around transmission behaviour 2nd & 3rd gear below 2000 rpm ? I don’t recall ever posting anything around transmission issues with my car as I hadn’t had any? Happy to help just not sure I can. Let me know. Thanks

W205C43PFL

Thanks @GWSHARK for tagging me and letting me know. no, I didn't say you have posted any issue with your transmission, I was trying to figure out something. I will try to send you another PM, hopefully it works this time. Thanks buddy!