I had the same thing happen to my 04 s430. Luckily, I still had the extended warranty and took it to the stealership and had it fixed. They would of charged about $460 to have it fixed. But the problem is a simple little plastic piece by the shifter. I'm not experienced enough to take it appart myself, but if you can do it...go for it and save your self some cash. Good luck.

 

You need a #20 torx driver and a 1/8 drill bit to get the shifter apart properly. There is a curved stainless cover that goes over everything. It is pop riveted to th the plastic side plate and a bracket right above the solenoid. It also has on screw holding it to tha main assembly.You can pry the side plate off without removing that pop rivet, but you have to drill the one above the solenoid out. Once I got the cover off, I removed the following: The offending black plastic part, the cast metal lever arm it actuates (that actually locks the shifter in park), the spring that swings the metal lever up to lock the shifter and the e-ring clip that held it in place. I did not replace the pop rivet above the solenoid because I don't think it matters. The shift is only slightly more over-engineeried than the idiotic pop-up cup holder. I also took a lot of pictures, because there is a lot the instructions don't say. I'll post them soon, but right now I am going to finish putting it back together.

 

There seems to be a golden metal tube blocking one of the allen bolts to remove the shifter box, did anybody run into this problem? could it be because the shift lever needs to be moved from park? if so is hammering the lever the only way to force the lever to budge?

 

WOW!! mercedes benz dealership ripped me off.. 840 last year...

 

Time to give back to the forum...

I've been following this post for a while, because I've had the "stuck in park problem" on my 2002 S500 for several months. At first it was just hard to shift, then got increasingly harder.
I found a "trick" that let me drive the car for another good 6 months, until I finally bit the bullet fix it. Maybe it works for you: I leave the car in neutral, with the parking brake on. After all that how the rest of the world, except we lazy Americans park their cars with stick shifts...Problem is you can't get the key out in that position. What I found, at least on my car, is that I could move the shifter almost all the way into the park position, i.e push forward, but hold it pressed to the right side. Don't let it make the little jerk to the left into the notch of the Park position. When held in that position (with your left hand), I was able, to turn the ignition all the way OFF and take the key out with my right. Then I moved it back into neutral and put the parking brake on. Voila!
To make sure the shifter it doesn't accidentally slip into Park during this acrobatics act, I jammed a bit of crumbled up paper into that notch. Worked for six months... until it didn't...
I tried the hammer trick to get it out, but with hindsight, I wasn't gutsy enough to hit it really hard.

I went to a local independent garage, which I can highly recommend to anyone in the Long Island, Queens Area - *****'s Auto Service at 5 Hicks Lane, Great Neck, NY. He does nothing but MB's. The again that's not that difficult, every other car around here is a MB. He's a real straight shooter. He even came to my house to pick up the car, which was already resigned to tow in. I saw him do the "hammer act" with a no-nonsense 5 pound iron mallet. One sharp hit on top of the shifter stick (after the leather knob was removed) and he was able to move it out of park.
It cost me $700. The part is about $450-$500, and about 2 hours labor. So if your' getting quoted anything more it's highway robbery. He also left the old part in the trunk without me asking for it, and delivered the car back to my house. Wow!

 

PS: ***** advised against removing the broken plastic part. The problem is not only that the sifter can be moved without pressing the brake after the car is started. Everybody presses the brake when they turn on the car. It will also move freely without the need of the key in the ignition, when the car is off and parked. I take his word for it... Just imagine, scrambling to pick up something from the passenger side foot well in the parked car, by chance you knock against the shifter off the car goes down the hill with you in it...Or if you forget to lock the car, and the kids get in...

 

I had the same problem and was OK right up until I was trying to get the shift linkage off from under the car. The linkage rod end broke when I used a little too much pressure. Other than that I got the plastic piece out and the shifter works great. So I went ahead and pulled the whole shifter rod out from under the car, disconnected it at the tranny end too. I wonder how much that rod will cost me from Mercedes??? Anyone have any ideas about buying the part online?

 

This was the most helpful, money saving post I've ever read. I did do it myself, although it took me longer than I thought, ( about 3), but now I get ABS, Distronic, Cruise Control, & ESP errors. Car shifts and drives fine, but I don't know how to get rid of the errors. Anyway thank you again for your post since I'm sure it saved me $1000 minimum. Any ideas on the other problems that are happening now?

 

So to be clear on the easy fix (removing the fragile plastic lever piece) what are the downsides of NOT having this plastic lever piece?

 

In addition to the information in post #54 above, there is the chance you could try to start in gear, without your foot on the brake. With luck, you might only damage a garage door or wall, or a car in front of or behind you, and your bumper. With bad luck, you could injure or kill someone, especially a child.

 

My 04 sl55's gear is stuck in park. The lever won't come out of P no matter what even with the hammer, and to cut the lever will be probably my last option as I will destory the keyless Go feature, is there any other way to engage the lock with a pick or anything? Please Help.

 

I am amazed that you could read this string and fail to realize that the answer to your problem is right here. Therefore I assume you didn't bother to read it. Very bad form, newbie or not. RTFF.

 

Has anyone purchased and replaced the part. Not just removed it.

 

Welcome to the forum.

One thing you should do on this or any other forum of which you are a member, is read the string in which you're posting before asking a question that has already been answered. You might have gotten a hint of that if you had read the post immediately before yours. The answer to your question is yes, and the information you need is within this very string. Please read, and pay attention to the folks who have already given their time once to help resolve the problem.

 

Actually the start inhibit switch and the shift lock solenoid are two separate components. Remember, you can't start these cars in drive regardless. they must be in park or neutral. These circuits were kept separate for good reason.

either way, I's always a good habit to use the E-brake for added safety just like you would if you were driving a standard. Especially if you have the plastic peice removed as i do.

 

you think you can do it in an hour now that you have done it once before? Email me nlynch47@gmail.com

 

So you went from STUCK IN PARK to NOT Stuck in Park yourself? How much labor did it take you?

 

Actually I followed the warnings from these threads and didn't Wait till I was left in the street because of this well known issue.

As soon as I saw my car getting stuck a few times, I got it home and removed the shifter and sure enough the plastic lever was cracked and came apart in my hand as I removed it.

This is a lot easier job to do if you can get the car out of park obviously because you need to remove the car from park in order to remove the shifter cover. But thats the only reason as i remember.

The job took about an hour to an hour and a half for me to complete.

 

　　　

This is a Brand New Mercedes Benz Shifter Repair kit, comes with 2 pcs in a kit
for 2 different sytles of shifters and you will receive it all in one kit.
　
　　

 

I also found this company out of the US Virgin Islands that makes the part out of metal and has a life time warranty. A bit expensive at 255.00


http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/Merce...mZ290357216057

 

I followed the detailed instructions here: http://www.benzworld.org/forums/w220...ols-heres.html on how to free my W220 2000 S430 out of park.

I removed the broken black piece inside the shift box as well as the metal E-ring piece of metal arm behind it. I can now shift from park to reverse, neutral, and drive but while I'm driving the car won't automatically shift into higher gears. It's as if I'm driving in 1st gear no matter how fast I go. Shift Tronic also doesn't work now. When I got on the freeway today, it would stay at 4000 RPM's and never up or downshift with speed changes. Anyone has some good ideas what could be wrong?

 

My shifter on a 2000 S430 was stuck in park. We followed the instructions on taking shifter out and removing plastic part. Shifter works but key will not come out of the ignition. I had MB Roadside come out and recharge car but a few hours later the car was dead because of the key being in position 0. After about 30 minutes of pulling on key, it came out!!! Any suggestions on what went wrong or remedies for this concern. Shifter works but now car is still not operable due to key draining battery. HELP PLEASE!!!!!!!

 

I just had my 2000 S430 in the shop last week because of a battery drain problem myself. I bought a brand new battery from Mercedes last June and if I don't drive my car for more than a week, it wouldn't start up so I brought my car into Mercedes to test the battery, well $308 later (2 hrs diag @$140/hr) they told me that my navi unit had a short circuit in it causing my battery to drain excessively and to replace it would cost $4k. My other option they said was to have them wire in a trickle charger to my battery for $500. That's seriously ridiculous since I already have a trickle charger that only cost me $50.

By the way I was able to fix my problem of driving in what seemed to be 1st gear after taking out "the plastic piece". I forgot to plug in one cable to the gear box when I was reassembling everything back together. Everything works fine now.

 

So after you were able to remove the plastic piece out of the shifter, you never had problems getting the key out of the ignition? My battery is good (checked by MB yesterday) however the key is causing the batteries "juice" to run down. Took shifter out again... rehooked!!!! I am waiting to see if key comes out after car is charged again....

 

I had the same problem and found a free solution.....EJECT the Nav CD when parking the car...it worked for me!