Hi eddieg227,
Thanks for your helpful tips, I will give it a try again today and if I have no luck it's out with the hacksaw I really don't know why MB would make such a beautiful car and use cheap parts where it really matters, they must have been in trouble around that time I think. I'm just happy I wasn't stuck in park in the north at -45C and low on gas now that would be a great piece of advertising to put on you tube, I can just see it now

 

I hope your taking the knob off before whacking on the rod. Unscrew and pull the knob off.

Whack the top of the rod and pull down to bump it past the broken shift lock.

 

Yeah thanks, I know some guys that would be silly enough to do that for sure, it's a good way to lose another $150 bucks real fast

 

Well try as I may I couldn't get out of park using the bump method, so I had to resort to damp towels to cover everything that matters, and then grind the handle off.

When I opened the gear shift up I could see that the plastic piece of **** had broken completely in half and the thick aluminum lever was firmly holding the gear shift from moving out of the park position. Even when I used a 5lb mallet it wouldn't budge an inch. I bought another from a guy on Ebay for $200 and an aluminum lever to replace the plastic one at a cost of $35, I couldn't tell what the lever looked like until I removed the shifter and measured the lever, 10mm 0r 5mm?

Seeing as this was my first complete center console disassemble I don't think I did too bad, I swapped my original computer part and moved that to the Ebay one, I installed it and it checked out fine going through all the gears with no problem.

Putting the air con pipes and that steel cover back on is a bit of a bear due to the angle of the screws, I found coming in on the left door with both seat backs and doing up the right screws was the way to get my fat fingers on the screw heads to get them started. With the laid flat and the screw holes aligned just past the seat belt buckle did the trick for me.

Connecting the wires was not to bad but because of the delay in finishing the work ie: waiting for parts to arrive etc, I have one small problem I can remember every wire position except one and it's driving me nuts trying to figure out where it goes. It's a small Blue connector with one wire grey with black stripe and the other wire brown I'm damned if I can remember where it went and I have checked every place possible I can see. If any of you good folks still have photos of your strip down maybe you can help me out. I just passed my 70th birthday so I guess the grey matter is forgetting things more now

 

Well I feel pretty sure that this blue connector attaches to the inside ashtray light and is attached to the ashtray along with the large black connector, but where does the ashtray lid light wire go? If anyone with a CL55 is removing their ashtray for any reason I could sure use the help with this problem, I would hate to have to take it to my local merc rippoff shop.