There always was a bit of slop in park, the car would roll back slightly till the Pawl engaged, so that may be what's going on. The car isn't trying to get away from me in park, but when I get under to look at where the grinding sound is coming from, there is movement of the driveshaft corresponding the the louder noises coming from the transmission. I'm going to take it to a shop on Monday to have someone check it out first before I go thru the massibve downtime of taking this transmission out and finding another one.
and as if I didn't have enough to worry about, we just got a large snow dump overnight

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RIP: 80 300SD
RIP: 79 450SEL
2002 E430 4matic (212,000km)
2002 ML500 'sport'

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FACEBOOK: PANZER450