My wife just dropped my son off at a dance and put the car in drive to pull away and she said it acted like a manual trans and she was just learning to drive stick(I assume this means it was bucking) she also said it was grinding when it was trying to get going. Once it got going she said it drove perfectly fine the rest of the way home (4 miles or so).

When listening to the car in park it sounds like a bad catalytic converter rattle (sounds like a heat shield against the cat rattling if you know what I mean) but from the torqe converter area behind the engine. You can also feel the same vibration in the shifter. I *****ed and moaned a little and took it for a test drive, it drove fine. Once its in gear the noise is gone and drives normally, reverse / forward and all gears. So I drove it to a friends house who is a general mechanic (not an mb guy) and had him listen to it. I had the car shut down when he came out of house and explained the issue to him and then started the car for him to hear the noise, after the car was running for 20 seconds or so there was an electric motor noise coming from the trans area that lasted about 1 or 2 seconds. It sounded like this noise was trying to engage something that wasnt "happening" and it stopped. I drove it home and it shifted fine, put it in park and the noise is getting quieter but still present. It almost sounds like something between the engine and trans like a flexplate, flywheel or torque converter mounting bolts broke.

We have owned the car for about 3 years now, we got it with 92,000 miles on it and it now has 120,000. The only trouble we had with it is, the ac blows hot no matter what we do, the stereo wont recognize the factory cd player and the check engine light is on because of a faulty gas cap. We had problems in the past with the mass airflow sensor and replaced it twice to the tune of $700 each time aswell. Oh, I almost forgot the 3 wiper motors we put in, one each winter since she likes to leave the wiper on when shutting down the car, it freezes to the window and when you start it.. well the rest is history.


Any idea what this transmission problem would be?