So, diligent readers of the forum will recall that I stripped out the transmission shaft and output drive yoke on my '79 240D last month. The expensive end to that story was I bought a used 4-speed from a local Mercedes guy (is it OK to say "hoarder"?), and paid my usual shop to swap them, as I wasn't willing to do that in the street in December in front of my house. Long story short, they buggered the job: ignored the hoarder's advice on what should be paired with what, had to do the swap twice. I'll skip over the what they charged me (a lot) and the abuse the owner gave me ("I'm never doing a job with owner parts again!!"). Went to pick it up the last business day before Christmas, and the tech warned me that he had done the best job he could with the adjustment of the shifter, but it might be funky.
Well, it is funky all right: this morning I went to leave in the 240D, backed into the neighbor's drive to turn around, and could not get the shifter out of reverse!!
Now, I've driven it a couple times since I picked it up, and the four forward gears were seemingly where I expected them to be in the shift pattern. Reverse, however, wasn't quite in the usual place: with the old transmission you pulled up and over to the left, and the shift lever went about as far forward as it usually did in first (say, 3 inches). Since the bungled swap, I would pull up the handle go left and forward about half the usual distance. So, that's probably a clue.
Also, in it's current state, no matter where you put the lever, even in what it should be neutral, you're in reverse.
What I am hoping that you, dear reader, can supply me with is this: what do I need to manipulate on the three levers coming out of the transmission to get it out of reverse gear? I'm pretty sure that one of those levers is dedicated to reverse, hopefully pulling the right lever forward or backward will pop it out of reverse so that I can drive it over to the knuckleheads who put it in this state and guilt them into doing the adjustment that they obviously didn't have time for before.