I'm beginning to strip down my donor car and have a question about the shifter assembly...do I HAVE to pull my center console out to remove/install the shifter assembly? (I pulled the console in the donor cause I really don't care about damaging stuff that will never be reinstalled anyway.) But my "receiving" car interior is in gorgeous shape and I really don't want to pull that one all apart if I really don't NEED to...

J.G.

Nope, there are four (10mm I believe) bolts that anchor the shifter assembly the transmission tunnel from above. With a socket and extension you can remove those bolts without removing the console. The manual shifter assembly is slightly different in shape but has a matching bolt pattern. Remember to transfer the manual shifter assembly's gasket as well.

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Spencer

87 2.5L 190D Turbo 5-speed - 102k (Daily Driver)
82 300D Turbo - 145k - Light Ivory (near mint)

Gone: 85 300D Federal - mileage unknown

Ahhh...That's what I was hoping to hear...thanks! One less item I need to remove means one less thing I can break!

J.G.

I completed my 5 speed install yesterday on my 1984 190 D i got from craigslist for 300.00 about 2 years ago. It is pretty awesome. This thread was great. Thank you OP and everyone. A couple of things hung us up that were stupid we should have checked.

The car I got was an automatic that had gone out and the owner took it to a transmission shop to have it looked at. They said the tranny was bad and before he could blink they had taken the tranny out and tore it down trying to get him hooked on the rebuild. So i got lucky and already had the tranny pulled for me. But i never got to see the car run so i wasn't positive it would.

At pull a part i scored a complete tranny swap kit out of a 1984 190E: clutch, flywheel , It had a new driveshaft from a driveshaft shop with good flex disks and carrier bearing, pedal, shifter, master and slave cylinders for about 300.00. I really got lucky.

Yesterday we finally got to installing the tranny after doing the pedals and shifter and such on a previous day. When we went to hook up the the hydraulic fluid line to the reservoir and were trying to bleed the system we were not getting any fluid out of the slave cylinder bleeder. It turned out the slave cylinder was clogged behind the bleeder nipple. A little mud or something had gotten in there. An all cleaned it out and then we could bleed it.

I put my power bleeder on the reservoir and pumped it up and then bled at the slave cylinder. It worked great.

After getting everything hooked up we couldn't get it in reverse. It turned out the shifter assembly was a little worn and the Reverse lockout mechanism wouldn't engage. It would almost but just couldn't quite get the lockout tab in its slot. The shifter rebuild kit A2012601839 would probably fix this . But not having it , my friend used his grinder and ground a little bit of the lockout plate so it would be able to slip into its channel. You still have to push down on the gear shift to go in reverse. We compensated for the worn bushing or whatever my modifying the lockout plate . The moral of the story is, check your shifter before you install it and make sure it is working If you have this problem you will see it and know what to do.

Next, the shifter didn't have bushings on it. i didn't have the bushings , part 210 992 00 10 , so we used some rubber hose for now. Maybe when i do the shifter rebuild , i will do these. I bet these bushing come with the shifter rebuild kit. They should. The bushing on the transmission levers were there and in good shape, part 000-992-10-10 if you need it.

So finally we are ready to start it up. I had changed the oil first. We checked the transmission oil and diff oil and all were good and looked really clean golden brown. Not black at all. I wasn't sure what would happen, the car hadn't run for 2 years, but i put a newly charged battery in it and cranked it and it started on the first try and purred like a kitten with no smoke after initial start up. Amazing! I love the 601 engine.

I'm not sure what diff I have. But the car drives fine. It is a bit slow up hills but it is torquey and i love how you can just cruise nice and easy at 25 mph in 4th gear. Going up big hills you have to downshift though to about second. I tried to find a part number on the diff and this is what i think i saw: 2013511401 . I didn't grab the diff off of the car at pull a part. Does anyone know how to identify the diff ? I couldn't find it when i looked initially.

All in all, this is an easy weekend job and goes smooth if you have all your stuff. Just check that damn slave cylinder with a vacuum pump and make sure you can suck air through it and the bleeder closes the air flow. :0

Happy wrenching!

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What Would Rudolph Do?
1975 300D, 1975 240D, 1985 300SD, 1997 300D, 2005 E320 , 2006 Toyota Prius