This happened to me yesterday, and now it's the second time, so I feel I need to say something. Here's my background:

1983 300D, 194K, bought it 3 months ago. Have vacuum issues (door locks, tranny shifts hard/too soon, etc), been fixing various things, getting acquainted. Fuel filters are new, diesel purge done, alda lines cleared, car's been on biodiesel for 2 years before I got it, and still is.

The problem: yesterday I was in stop and go traffic on the freeway. When I started going again from a slow crawl, the transmission was stuck in 2nd gear. As I accelerated, it actually dropped down into 1st gear and would not get out unless I backed off the accelerator, but still it would only be in 2nd. It almost felt like the car was running out of gas?

This only happened to me once before, about a month ago, and again it was stop and go traffic. The solution? Both times, I pulled over, stopped the car, shut it off, restarted the engine, put it in gear and everything was back to normal. What the hell does that mean?

Should I be worried about the tranny or is there something else weird going on here? Other than these two instances, my tranny has never slipped, even though it always shifts hard (which I'm told is a sign of a strong tranny, just one with vacuum issues). Thoughts?

Vac related, I'm thinking. Some hard shifts may can be adjusted out. A tranny fluid and filter change will help also.

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83 SD

84 CD