W210-2001 Auto Elegance Problem

[ROBERT]

Hi,can anyone shed any light on this problem,when i put her into gear drive,it will go for about 1mile and then with the engine still running as sweet as a nut it does not seem to engage the gears.i had my merc mechanic come over with his computer and when he done the tests it read one gearbox fault.he changed the air flow meter as he said there was no gearbox fault.retested it and the ecu ticked all the boxes.i went to pick my son up from school which is about 1 mile or so from my home and before i got to him the engine diagnostic light had come on and it started to play up again.i just about got home but had to keep stopping and starting as every now and then it would not move although being in drive.one thing i have noticed it reads on the dash as being in drive neutral park e.t.c. but i get no tiptronic reading when i try to use this.hope this is understandable to you guys out there,and any information on similar problems would be of help.cheers bob.

 

[Birdman]

Hi Robert and welcome to the forum.

Gearbox trouble can be very difficult to diagnose, as you're finding out. Apart from the obvious move of getting a specialist onto it, the things that occur to me are a selector problem - there's a pin which needs to fully engage within the selector mechanism I believe, for the box to operate corrrectly and it's a wear item. The other and more distant tho worrying possibility is that the clutches are worn and/or the auto transmission fluid is contaminated.

The fact the engine diagnosis light comes on suggests that the problem may lie in the engine mangement electronics somewhere.

That doesn't exactly help but there are others on the forum who have actually worked on this kind of stuff with clearer ideas of where to look next.

 

[Dieselman]

The first things to check would be the electrical connection plug on the side of the gearbox followed by the selector mechanism. It sounds like the selector is showing implausable gear selection.