My mother has a SL320 that we borrowed over the weekend. My wife in the SL320 and me in my CLK320. Upon returning from a 2 hour trip home at a stoplight I noticed smoke coming up from around the sides of the car. I wanted my wife to pull over but the light turned and traffic did not let me convey my message (cell phone dead). At the house I notice smoke coming from most of the exhaust under the car especially around the area of the cat. conv. I checked the transmission fluid level (to no avail). There was fluid all over the dipstick but I could never get a clear indication of where the fluid level was. Same with engine oil. I noticed some oily substance along the bottom of the car between the wheels but absolutely no oil or anything that appeared funny in the engine compartment. It only dripped about two drops of fluid over night and sounds fine so I drove it back to my parents. My mother put paper under the car last night and a few more drops have come from 2 different places. One looks sort of orangish and the other kind of yellowish (both oily). About 8000 miles ago she had the head gasket replaced and she says ever since it has been sluggish. I used to think that my CLK was just a little faster than her SL but now it is a lot faster. You have to give the car a lot of pedal to get it moving. The rpms do not climb until the car starts to roll it just takes more pedal to get going (not the parking brake). Any questions, comments? Her car was out of warranty when the head gasket needed replaced but apparently MB extended the warranty on that part because MB covered the head gasket replacement. Kind of suspicious! There is not any oil leaking from the head gasket. The car is also making a strange loud click when moved from reverse to park. It has aprox 63,000.

 

New head gasket (not sure if the one they replaced was defective or they did it wrong). New transmission pan (dealer said they had it off at the 60,000 mile check up and must have put it on wrong!!). They are still not sure about some of the noises and the ac blower motor needs replaced. I think the head gasket was wrong causing some sort of fluid (coolant, oil) into one of the cylinders causing the sluggish acceleration. Is there any major problems that can come from driving the car like this?