Tow question e320 4matic 2002
 

Hey guys i'm visiting from the diesel forum for a question :o Please pardon the story, my question is at the bottom.

I have a close friend who inherited his parent's e320 4matic. It's a nice car with sub 100k miles on it.

Recently my friend was driving around and all of a sudden his CEL came on. He slowed down and then started noticing that his transmission wouldn't shift out of 1st gear. Since he has no idea what is wrong he calls his mom who goes and calls me. :P I'm quite flattered people think of me as this crazy mechanic, but I am nowhere near that level nor even wish to be.

I don't know ANYTHING about these new cars and for starters I don't have a scanner. I was tempted to say let's limp it down to autozone, but decided against it . His gas cap wasn't resting properly either, and I do know that can trip the light, but that was easily fixed by putting my own cap onto it. The light didn't go away so we parked it off near the back of the lot.

Fast forward to yesterday, my friend in his infinite wisdom never purchased a parking pass from the school and was subsequent towed after his 8th ticket.

He called me for a ride and his mother shortly there after called me asking to look over the car and make sure it's ok.

Now I know from experience that a 4 wheel drive car needs to be flatbedded. I told him to ask the guy how it was towed. He said it wasn't flatbedded, but put onto dollies and driven to the lot.

When he went to pull the car out, the vehicle didn't start to push into reverse until it was at around 2,000 rpms.

Is it possible that the tow company damaged the car by putting it onto dollies? The nearest dealer is in Binghamton so my friend drove the car to a mechanic in town who agreed to look at it.

This has me curious. What type of problems could a tow with dollies do to a 4matic?

Should not be a problem
 

towing with dollies means they cradle the rear wheels on the dolly and lift the front with the wrecker and pull it in. The wheels were not turning. Could he have driven it "onto" the dollies? I think they can, and that does take a lot of power.