I've got a 2008 451 pure, 47000 miles. The car tends to lose it's sense of what gear it's in at various times (sometimes when at a stoplight, sometimes while moving through the gears on local streets, and once while cruising on the interstate). Then it gets all confused and various warnings appear: the check engine light appears and flashes, the double wrenches appear and flash, the big D (Drive) switches from solid to flashing, and the yellow exclamation triangle appears and flashes. It also then goes to and stays in 5th gear. After slowly moving to a safe place, I turn off the engine and the 3 horiz bars show. In order to get the car to start, I then go through the sequence of waiting about 30 secs to a minute, then put foot on brake pedal, turn ignition key to position 1, then shifting from P to R, N, D and back for the electronics to figure out where it is. Once I see the D re-appear, I can go to P and start the car. The wrenches disappear, sometimes the check engine and the safety exclamation lights disappear too!
This has now happened more than 6 times in the past 2 weeks. Last Sunday (6 days ago) I removed, cleaned and adjusted the clutch actuator, using the advise found in threads on this forum. I found the insides of the actuator with powdery, dried out black lubricant, and relubed with white lithium grease. I reattached the actuator to the spec sheets recommendation of 3 gradation lines displacement from abutment towards the bell housing. I don't believe the actuator is the cause of the problem, since the shifting confusion has occurred before and since the cleaning. The worst was yesterday, it ran amok 4 times in 4 miles before I could get it home
Any ideas would be appreciated. Today I put a help request to the local smart center using their web-link in smartusa, but I have never dealt with the service center, having bought this car used.
They phoned me almost immediately, wanted to know if I wanted to set up an appointment.
Being on a very, very limited budget, I cannot blithely setup a service appt and hope for the best to a Mercedes Benz service dealership. I need some reassurances before handing over the keys. I asked to speak to a service tech, was told all were busy so my message would be passed on to them and one would get back to me.
So has anyone here had a similar problem with their car, and how did you fix it?
This has now happened more than 6 times in the past 2 weeks. Last Sunday (6 days ago) I removed, cleaned and adjusted the clutch actuator, using the advise found in threads on this forum. I found the insides of the actuator with powdery, dried out black lubricant, and relubed with white lithium grease. I reattached the actuator to the spec sheets recommendation of 3 gradation lines displacement from abutment towards the bell housing. I don't believe the actuator is the cause of the problem, since the shifting confusion has occurred before and since the cleaning. The worst was yesterday, it ran amok 4 times in 4 miles before I could get it home
Any ideas would be appreciated. Today I put a help request to the local smart center using their web-link in smartusa, but I have never dealt with the service center, having bought this car used.
They phoned me almost immediately, wanted to know if I wanted to set up an appointment.
Being on a very, very limited budget, I cannot blithely setup a service appt and hope for the best to a Mercedes Benz service dealership. I need some reassurances before handing over the keys. I asked to speak to a service tech, was told all were busy so my message would be passed on to them and one would get back to me.
So has anyone here had a similar problem with their car, and how did you fix it?