I drive a manual transmission 300E 190 miles almost every day. I've never so much as changed a bushing in the shifter in well over 150,000 miles since I've had it and it works perfectly.

I don't totally understand your question. Is there something not working correctly? If you just don't like the FEEL that is due to the design of the shifter, there's not a lot you can do about it without doing some pretty serious fabrication. You could fabricate some transmission levers that are shorter to give a shorter throw. You could fabricate brass bushings for all the pivot points to make it less smooth and more noisy.

MB's, even ones with manual transmissions are designed with extremely high concern for quiet, smooth operation. They are very successful at this. Their goal is not to make a stripped down, noisy, harsh race car. With this design goal in mind, they mount the shifter to the chassis rather than the hot, vibrating transmission.

I have driven way over a million miles in all sorts of cars and very, very few of those miles in cars with automatic transmissions. I started in cars with three speeds on the column, knuckle buster non synchro light truck transmissions, sixties muscle cars with various four speeds and hurst shifters, etc, etc, and I find the shifter in my Benz to be excellent. It is not a short throw Muncie, but it doesn't need to be, that engineering necessity is found in cars that are snap shifted hard while going through the 1/4 mile or mixing the gears quickly up and down while working through a road course. The MB was not exactly designed with this in mind.

After finishing the above and posting it, it occurred to me that what might be giving you trouble is the clutch not fully releasing. You need to check the hydraulics and ensure that it is bled properly and in proper order.

Good luck,