raymond g-

in the family, we have an 00 E320 4m which needed a new tranny at 45k.
fortunately, it was still under Starmark and the cost for the tranny was $0.
symptom? abrupt downshift from 2 to 1st gear. tried reset, fluid change
to no avail.

Lexus sedan in family as well. great car, no problems yet. similar vintage,
and actually, when amoratized...taking into consideration, insurance,
repairs, extended warranty, taxes, etc....is a better value per mile if you
just look at the numbers.

i'll leave the arguments of intangible aesthetics L vs MB to others.

saintz

This sounds different from what you posted before. Did you go to have the fluid flushed and they found shavings?

I've said before, the transmission in this car is extremely stout. It's the same unit used in the $320k SL 65 AMG Black Series. It can handle over 700 lbs-ft of torque. How many family sedans have a genuine supercar level transmission?

With that said, there are two major design (or marketing) flaws to the 722.6. The first you have already seen, which is the leaking TCU connector. This is particularly bad because it can cause damage to other parts of the car (TCU), rather than just the transmission. The second was the inital "sealed for life" concept. It's true that the transmission can go it's entire life without new fluid... so long as you understand the transmission life will be shorter than the car life. It never specifies which "life" they are talking about. I think anything over 50k miles is a lot to ask of a lubricant. My CLK needed to be changed at 80k and 9 years because it was starting to shift rough. Changed regularly, and the transmission should last.

P.S. - You probably want to change the fluid on your Nissan, that's way past due.

What happened on your car really appears to be a fluke. I would say the same for Raymond's. Very rarely do they appear to break under 100k miles, and even then it's normally only if the fluid wasn't changed (or was changed with the wrong fluid).

It's also possible your two issues are related. When your tranny leaked, it got oil on the TCU. This often causes abnormal behavior as the circuits of the TCU are shorted. Did the car ever shift abnormally? When did the symptoms start? It's possible the tranny computer basically broke the mechanicals. Perhaps it constantly tried to lock the torque converter at inappropriate times, for example. The torque converter does appear to be weaker than the rest of the tranny, and should be separately replaceable (i.e. cheaper). When my CLK was shifting rough, it appeared to be the lockup of the torque converter, not anything to do with the gearing, that was rough.

If you can give us a more expanded timeline, symptoms, and what you have and haven't done so far, maybe we can help.