83 240D

Car clunks into reverse from park. Backend squats down pretty bad. Then does the same from reverse to drive.

Not entirely worried about it but it is annoying


Any way to prevent?

Also having flaring issues but I think I just need to turn the modulator a couple turns.

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-Dan
1983 240D AT, 163K running on VO, "The Patience Tester"

Your back end moving up and down when engaging drive and reverse is most likely a bad differential mount and/or bad sub frame bushings. Your drive shaft center bearing mount is probably bad allowing your drive shaft to move around. Might also be that your idle speed is too high.

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"spreading a trail of obnoxious where ever we go"
1981 300sd w/ 341,500 miles

http://www.wecrash.com/pics/ddda_banner.gif

checked your flex disks lately?

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1987 300D (230,000 mi on a #14 head-watching the temp gauge and keeping the ghost in the machine)
Raleigh NC - Home of deep fried sushi!

when i had just purchased my 300D, i had the clunking sound during reverse. after replacing my Rear axles the sounds went away. i would check your axles.

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Grey '91 350SDL 214k Dad's car
Beige '81 240D 4 Speed 254k SOLD
Blue '82 300D 225k SOLD
White '95 E300D 46k SOLD
Blue '87 190D 2.5 Turbo 315k SOLD
Brown '80 240D 4 Speed 716k SOLD
Beige '80 300D N/A 119k SOLD
Blue '85 300D Model 186k T-Boned

I finally took the time to tweak my transmission today after owning it almost two years. It was shifting pretty hard at 2-3 and was dropping into gear hard from park or neutral (shifting into the lowest gear instead if drive seemed to help soften it a bit). It took me about a minute to solve the hard 2-3 gear shift by bypassing the EGR system vacuum (thanks to this forum) and about 30 seconds to solve the hard shift into drive by lowering my idle from about 900 RPM to around 700 RPM. Kind of silly that I waited so long to fix this. So I'd check your idle speed first, if it's high enough I would think that the torque from the driveshaft could squat the rear end when engaging too. Of course it could be a rear end problem too so I'd definitly check that out further.
I was just thinking how much of a pain this car could be if this forum didn't exist. Thank guys!

Idle speed is a great suggestion
I do think that it is high, will check on that. Kind of stinks not having a tach but I should be able to figure it out

Flex disc attached to the differential is in good condition. Haven't checked the front one. It's going to be a nightmare if I ever need to change the rear as one of the nuts is rounded.

Also going to be replacing diff and tranny fluid soon, perhaps will see some change from that too. No clue when the last time these were done on this car as I just purchased it 2 months back.

__________________
-Dan
1983 240D AT, 163K running on VO, "The Patience Tester"

I used to have a pretty good *thunk* into reverse. I would drop it into reverse, there would be almost a second of hesitation, the thunk, and then it was ready to go. The thunk was less switching into D but it was still there. Replacing the two shift bushings and the neutral safety switch completely cured the rough R engagement. I did the bushings first and then the NSS as starting in Park was less than 50%. Fixing the reverse engagement was just an unexpected side benefit.

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1987 300TD 231,000
#22, afterglow, plastic fan, euro lights, alternator upgrade, cluster housing update

Turned down the idle speed and that fixed the park->reverse clunk but there is still a clunk from reverse to drive

__________________
-Dan
1983 240D AT, 163K running on VO, "The Patience Tester"