DesiBaba

Hello all, this is my first post...been following this forum for few months now, but just never really got the urge to post till now..

Ok, my question is to all E320 owners, did your car every bucked/jerked at a speed of say almost 0 miles(don't get technical). It doesn't happen all the time, but for past few weeks its been doing it randomly. It happens when i'm stopping, and my foot is off the gas, it starts to jerk. Very weird. I had a dealers appt. today, and thank god when i was pulling into the service bay it started to jerk right infront of the service advisor, but alas nothing came up in the diagnostics. Any thoughts?

P.S> I have a 03 E320 with 46k.

MB Fanatic

Did you ever use the triptronic feature on the transmission and redline while in 1st or 2nd gear for a prolonged period or time?

DesiBaba

Well i just bought the card few months ago at about 42k, since then i havn't done anything like that, and it was a middle aged lady i bought the car from, so i would highly doubt she did something like that on purpose, maybe unconciously it could happen, because the car could be thrown in a 1st or 2nd gear very ezily without knowing if ur hand is resting on the gear knob. Do you think that could do that? and if that caused it, is there a remedy for that?

MB Fanatic

It very well could. Just tell the SA that the transmission is shifting a bit roughly from 1st to 2nd and 2nd to 1st.

I had this problem on my 2001 E320 and they replaced a few things within the transmission. It was a fairly simple repair though.

BTW Great to have you on the board. Be sure to check out the Desi threads we have in the Off Topic. BTW Im Gujarati.

lig

Happend pretty regularly to mine. Only at crawling speeds - it struck most often in parking lots or extreme bumper to bumper situations.

I never was able to replicate it in front of the SA so it never got fixed.

DesiBaba

Thanks Fan,
Next time i bring in my car, i would have a ruckus if they didn't listen to my new found knowledge
Thanks for the tip on Desi forum, i'll check it out, btw i'm Pakistani.

CE750

sounds like the "normal" downshift of the trans into 1st gear that happens when you have a cold engine.. I for one like it, as it allows me to go down the hill I live on with a cold engine without having to ride the brakes.. by the time I've driven out of the neighborhood gates, the engine warmed up enough.

It's jerky, but its normal. Mom's E350, and her old C240 did it too.

DesiBaba

It doesn't happen when the car is cold, but when it feels like it. And i for one don't like taking a camel ride down a parking lot or wherever i am. It didn't feel normal to the service advisor either. So i'm not sure how you think it would be normal.

CE750

you must be talking about something different then, this isn't that bad.. and it only "jerks" the one time when it downshifts, not back and forth, like a "camel ride"

konigstiger

I had this very same problem with my ’03 e320. Bulletin P-B-07.00/28f - FEB04 “Engine Control Unit Software Update” solved it for me – never returned. Ask your SA to pull up this bulletin, might have been revised since then nevertheless I assume your ECU software needs to be updated.

Welcome, and good luck.

monstaloc

i have an 03 e500 and even after they replaced my tranny, i still have a similar "jerking problem" with the car. I'll put it on D, foot off the gas, and it will act like i floored it for 1 second, and then slow down again. don't know what to tell you. if you figure it out, let me know.

X72

My car exhibits this behavior sometimes at parking lot speeds. I have gotten good at modulating it with the throttle. I have never tapped the gear shift when this happens, but that is worth a try (try tapping it + or -) to see what happens when you start to feel the car buck. The software update mentioned in the thread sounds like a good idea to ask about.

It feels like a manual transmission car to me. I don't mind. The nice thing about this transmission is that in the mountains, it likes to hold gear and engine brake without me having to tap the gear down (-).

On flat land when I want the car to coast more as I am slowing down, I tap the gear + so that I get less engine braking.

William
2003 E320

P.S. Definitely complain because I have seen reports posted on this forum of glycol contamination of the ATF causing serious problems. My car only seems to do this at parking lots speeds, not when I am slowing down to stop after normal driving.

CE750

that was my point exactly... I like this "feature" and think it was done on purpose.

SAguirre

Even though my E has not yet done this, I had aE320 loaner car last year that was a bucking bronco! I returned the car to the dealer and explained what it was doing. It happened when it downshifted to 1st (or 2nd) at slow speeds.

Apparently, all of these transmissions have a torque converter locking mechanism that can lock in 5th, 4th, 3rd and 2nd gear. Anyway, there is some sort of software issue that makes the torque converter stay locked and believe it or not the E320 has tons of power at idle, so it can make the whole car buck.

If you want to experience a normal torque converter locking do the following:

Put your car with the transmission in "c" mode and accelerate smoothly briskly. All the while, look at the RPMs and you will notice that while the car is just starting the is slippage in the torque converter, then at about 1700-to 2000 RPMs you will see a 200 RPM drop in the engine speed without it shifting gears, this is when the converter locked to eliminate friction, heat wear and slippage.

I find this very interesting because the transmission tends to lock the torque converter and the quickly unlock it to shift up.

Please try it and tell me if you understand what I am talking about. I don't know if the 7-speed transmission will do the same thing though.

Steve

AZ_Mike

I posted a similar thread on the W203 page

Link to 7g issues on W203 page

I test drove the new C-Class, the '06 has the 7g transmission. When coming to a stop the car would jerk when shifting into 1st. Wondering if it goes away after the transmission learns your driving style?