Blazeracer

The button on the console for my SL500 transmission has W/S for winter and sport driving as opposed to C/S for comfort and sport. Moving the shifter left or right to tap through the gears doesn't do anything. I just got the car a week and a half ago and never checked this. In have the car's manual here and it says it should tap through the gears by moving the shifter from side to side, left downshifts and right upshifts. Other than that the transmisson works just fine. Dropping the hammer, it kicks down and goes through the gears screaming like a scalded dog on it's own. It's pretty damn impressive actually. Is there a fuse for the one-touch gearshifting feature? Wife took the car to work so I can't see the fuse diagram. Thanks

Rudeney

The W/S and C/S buttons do the same thing - they just changed the nomenclature for the fleet-wide MY2005 facelift. Basically Winter or Comfort mode will start in 2nd gear, upshift earlier and downshift later (i.e. with more throttle input). Summer or Sport mode will start in 1st gear, hold gears longer before an upshift, and downshift with less throttle input.

So, if tap the TouchShift left, it still shows "D" on the instrument cluster display? If so, you may have dirty contacts inside the shifter. What should happen when you tap left is that the transmission will downshift by one gear from it's current gear, and that will then be displayed on the instrument cluster. At that point, you will be limited to that as the highest gear allowed. Tapping left again will downshift one more gear (if possible, i.e. it would not over-rev the engine). Tapping right will request that the transmission upshift by one gear, if possible (i.e. you will still have enough RPM for the given speed). If you were in "D" mode and you tapped right, it will stay in D even though it will request an upshift. If you had tapped left and were in another gear, it will display the next higher gear on the instrument cluster. Once you get to 5th, it will go back to showing "S" and then be in full auto mode.

I know this can be a bit confusing because the TouchShift is doing two things - both requesting a gear change and limiting the top gear.

Blazeracer

I know what it's supposed to do. The previous ones I test drove I checked this and they worked as they should. I guess I'll pull the console out this weekend and check it out.

Rudeney

The TouchShift on my ML320 stopped working and I tore it down to fix it. I don't think this will be of much help with the R230, but for what it's worth, here it is:

http://benzbits.com/W163/touchshift/