While driving my '83 240D recently, I had a couple of incidents where the clutch pedal wanted to stick down. I don't know if there is any connection, but this car is a bit tricky to shift-when I go into First, I need to take care that I actually am in First, not Third or Reverse. This was not an issue with my '81. The car seems to have plenty of fluid. Any thoughts?

Yeah. These cars have such forgiving clutches that they seem to outlast the lubricants on the fork and throwout mechanism. If you know how to efficiently shift it, a 240D clutch will last a very long time.

Shern had a really great thread a year ago where the clutch was binding on the input shaft and he was able to free it up by sneaking in some spray lube through the fork port. Let me see if I can dig it up. Here it is.

w123 maybe not so odd clutch sound

I think something like this happened to my clutch but I never got a complete answer. My mechanic rebuilt everything at great cost.

__________________
79 300TD “Old Smokey” AKA “The Mistake” (SOLD)
82 240D stick shift 335k miles (SOLD)
82 300SD 300k miles
85 300D Turbodiesel 170k miles
97 C280 147k miles

The clutch pedal matter, and the gear selection matter are not connected.

The gear selection difficulties are caused by worn and/or broken parts in the selector (the handle that is used to shift gears).

The clutch pedal sticking down can be caused by: 1) a weak or mis-adjusted overcenter spring, 2) a failing clutch diaphragm spring, 3) the throwout bearing sticking on the guide tube [see link in post above], or a combination of one or more of these.

I would also like to add that contaminated fluid and/or a bad clutch master cylinder can cause the pedal to "stick" in a down or half-way down position.
This happened in my 240D, and a new master fixed it. When I inspected the old part, it was full of filthy dark brown gunk that I belive to be the issue.

Further, a person on another group had the same issue and I told them about my experience above. A master also fixed their issue.

In my opinion, the PO should start at the easy place and flush/bleed the fluid. Then, suspect the master before getting into the fork and such.

Regarding the difficulty to find the correct gear, I suspect the shift bushings as well. There are bushings in the selector itself, as well as on the rods underneath the car. The later are easy to inspect.

"reverse"!?!