Erratic Shifting - 1990, 190E
 

My 1990 190E 2.6 (190,000 miles) has suddenly decided to run through all the gears prior to hitting 2000 RPMs. To gain any level of performance, I have to manually shift through the gears. When coming to a stop in the Drive position there if an audible downshift thunk at or around 5 MPH.

I have performed the following to try to resolve the problem:

Replaced transmission fluid (Dexron III) and filter.
Replaced modulator valve and vacuum hose.
Checked control pressure cable.

The only maintenance that has been performed on this car was adjustment of the EAH valve a few weeks ago. This problem started three days ago.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Hi Kirk -

Did you pull the tranny pan and see if you could see any shavings or clutch material? How did the fluid look?

I'll let some others chime in here with some other hopefully helpful responses, but my '93 starting doing something similar to what you described, and I ended up having to have a rebuild as the shop had seen chunks of clutch material in the pain and mixed in with the fluid. Hopefully that won't be your problem, but if it is, just give thanks that you don't have a 722.6 that needs replacement! :)

-Michael

Michael,

Thank you for the response. I found no foreign materials in the pan and the oil had good color and no signs of contamination.

Hi Kirk,

I'm not sure whether your tranny is a similar model to my 1993 300E's (W124), but I had a similar problem. After much trial and error, I eventually solved the problem as per theis thread: http://www.peachparts.com/shopforum/tech-help/120658-93-300e-w124-auto-tranny-changing-up-too-early.html

Hope this helps!

Trevor

Thank you for the info Trevor,

I'll have to schedule this project for a later date - sounds like I need to leave a weekend open for the project. Did anyone ever determine where one can buy a valve body or govenor outside the dealership?

Kirk