CharlieRC
New Member
Today I was heading down the motorway in my 63 plate E250 CDI 7G-Tronic
The journey from home to the motorway (about 10 min) was completely uneventful, the car performing normally.
Joined the motorway and got up to 70 and was cruising in 7th gear as you'd expect. We got to the 50mph average speed check zone at the M25 end of the M4, so I dropped down to 50 and popped it into cruise control.
All was fine for the entire 50 zone, and when I saw the national speed limit sign, I used the cruise control stalk to bring the car back up to 70.
This was where things started to go wrong. As the car brought itself up to 70 and settled there, the engine revs sounded a bit high so I checked the dash and the gearbox was still in 6th gear... normally it goes into 7th at that speed.
So I disengaged cruise control and manually held the car at 70, and then a bit faster to see if it would change up... nope.
So I clicked the steering wheel gear+ button (can hardly call it a paddle to be honest lol) and even at 80 it just wouldn't go into 7th.
Then I noticed the engine warning light and my heart just sank. I've had this since July last year and it's been nothing but reliable for me until today.
I probably should have just pulled over and called a recovery service to get me home, but we were on our way to the Wales v Italy match in Cardiff and there was no way we could have been recovered home in time to get into our other car (56 plate Honda Civic 2.2 CTDI). So instead we stopped on the hard shoulder, and turned the car off completely. Left it for a few minutes, then back on... thinking it might have been some kind of computerised glitch as the fault appeared when using cruise control. Unfortunately the engine light came back on, and didn't go off, and the gearbox was still playing up. I decided to turn back at the next junction and drive 35 minutes back home.
The whole way back, I was having to manually click the gear+ button on the steering wheel to upshift as the 7G-Tronic box was having none of it. It would downshift on its own, but not upshift. I later found that it actually WOULD upshift, but only at ridiculously high revs.
Apart from the thing not shifting automatically, the engine seemed relatively OK, if not just a little underpowered... but that might have been psychological, as I was trying to be really careful with it to usher it home without causing too much damage.
I was wondering if anyone here might have an idea what might be causing this, or similar experience with their 7G-Tronic, and what might need to be repaired, not for the purposes of me trying to fix it myself - I fully intend on taking this round to my trusted MB specialist - but so I can start to come to terms with how much this might end up costing me to get sorted.
thanks in advance
The journey from home to the motorway (about 10 min) was completely uneventful, the car performing normally.
Joined the motorway and got up to 70 and was cruising in 7th gear as you'd expect. We got to the 50mph average speed check zone at the M25 end of the M4, so I dropped down to 50 and popped it into cruise control.
All was fine for the entire 50 zone, and when I saw the national speed limit sign, I used the cruise control stalk to bring the car back up to 70.
This was where things started to go wrong. As the car brought itself up to 70 and settled there, the engine revs sounded a bit high so I checked the dash and the gearbox was still in 6th gear... normally it goes into 7th at that speed.
So I disengaged cruise control and manually held the car at 70, and then a bit faster to see if it would change up... nope.
So I clicked the steering wheel gear+ button (can hardly call it a paddle to be honest lol) and even at 80 it just wouldn't go into 7th.
Then I noticed the engine warning light and my heart just sank. I've had this since July last year and it's been nothing but reliable for me until today.
I probably should have just pulled over and called a recovery service to get me home, but we were on our way to the Wales v Italy match in Cardiff and there was no way we could have been recovered home in time to get into our other car (56 plate Honda Civic 2.2 CTDI). So instead we stopped on the hard shoulder, and turned the car off completely. Left it for a few minutes, then back on... thinking it might have been some kind of computerised glitch as the fault appeared when using cruise control. Unfortunately the engine light came back on, and didn't go off, and the gearbox was still playing up. I decided to turn back at the next junction and drive 35 minutes back home.
The whole way back, I was having to manually click the gear+ button on the steering wheel to upshift as the 7G-Tronic box was having none of it. It would downshift on its own, but not upshift. I later found that it actually WOULD upshift, but only at ridiculously high revs.
Apart from the thing not shifting automatically, the engine seemed relatively OK, if not just a little underpowered... but that might have been psychological, as I was trying to be really careful with it to usher it home without causing too much damage.
I was wondering if anyone here might have an idea what might be causing this, or similar experience with their 7G-Tronic, and what might need to be repaired, not for the purposes of me trying to fix it myself - I fully intend on taking this round to my trusted MB specialist - but so I can start to come to terms with how much this might end up costing me to get sorted.
thanks in advance