I recently purchased an '01 E320 with 90K on the display. A few weeks ago one of the standing lights went out on me. Inadvertently, I replaced the hi beam lamp and the problem went away, for awhile. It went out again and now I replaced both hi beam lamps with silver star bulbs and now both standing lights are out. OK, stop laughing and rest assured that I am replacing the standing lamps that are not working.

In the meantime, I have experienced:
1. She has experienced hard starts, i.e. a couple of cranks to get going.
2. She has failed me once and needed a jump to get going. Cranked right over when jumped.
3. Twice now it has lurched when going from P to either R or D and under this condition will not shift out of 1st, either automatically or manually. Shutting down and restarting has corrected this. (no computer reboot jokes please.)

After the jump:
A. I disconnected the cables and checked the battery with a meter and it was showed good voltage (12v). When I hooked up the charger, it went to 10 amps and then started trickling down relatively quickly over the next couple of hours.
B. I reconnected the battery and started the car. Then disconnected the battery and measured across the cables and it looked like good voltage there (14v). So I think the charging system is fine.
C. I went through the paperwork and the battery looks to be less than a year old.
D. With the engine off and the negative cable disconnected, I put my meter leads on the battery terminal and the cable and monitored the amperage. I was showing a draw and I monitored this as I pulled each of the fuses from all 3 boxes with no change on the meter reading.

So I have a couple of questions,
What should I be reading on the meter when I am monitoring the draw? and is this the right way to check for a potential leak to ground?
Has anyone else experiencing this lurching and transmission lock symptom?
Any chance the burnt out lights are an indicator of a bigger problem?

Thanks for any help and comments here....