I ned help, by the way what a great resource for MB owners and enthusiasts. I have just boughg a 89 560sl and the second day I drove the car shifting problems started. I have read all the threads and am a little confused on one that will not shift out of second gear. The car only has 56,000 mi and was drive by little ole lady. Literally was stored every winter and not drive at all. 500 mi ago they had the tranmission serviced by a Mercedes Dealer. I doubt they put synthetic oil in as the invoice shows $3.00 per quart for the transmission fluid. I drove the car about 5 mi yesterday and it will shift out of first fine if you manually pul it into 1st and shift to second but only after about 4 1/2 mile did it ever shift into 3rd and that was after a lot of playing with the shifter. At that point it shifted into 4 th gear fine. I have gpme as high as 4500 RPM trying to get it to shift. Then last night I drove the car again and could never get it to shift into 3rd gear. Is this possibly a vacuum problem, other problem or do I likely have a bad transmission?

Thanks for your help

Rick
89 560 SL