Welcome to this forum. As a fellow owner of a 300TE 4Matic, I'll try to answer some of your questions.

1. A hard shift is normal for this model MB, at least until it warms up. If you do a search on this topic, you will find a lot of helpful information. In fact, there was just a thread on this within the past couple of weeks.

2. Can't help you here; I wasn't even aware that they did that. I'm now curious to know why too, since my car could use more hp too.

3. As far as I know yes.

4. Sensors. Perhaps one of the techs on this board will be able to give you the technical expaination I think you're looking for.

5. Sorry no, I'm up north.

6. No website that I'm aware of, but I found the maintenance CD's sold here in the parts shop, and this board, to be very helpful for DIY work.

7. Again, I'd use the parts shop here.

8. What oil to use . . . there's been endless discussion on this. If you do a search in this and the "Vintage Mercedes" group, I'm sure you'll find lots of information on the subject. Personally, I use Kendall 20w-50w dino oil in the summer and Kendall 10w-30w dino oil in the winter. Kendall also makes a synthetic & dino oil blend, but I haven't heard much about it, so I'm sticking with what has worked well for me so far.


1962 MB 220SEb "Fintail" Sedan
1963 Vespa VNB4T Scooter
1992 MB 300TE 4Matic Wagon
1995 Subaru Legacy AWD Wagon