Hello friends:

Well ... here I am posting again. When it rains, it pours!! My car was towed to the dealership on Friday evening, and will be looked at on Monday sometime. Here's what happened:

Was driving from a Madison, WI suburb to a city hospital. No problems - car was fine.

I get finished at the hospital and am driving back to the burbs, and the transmission starts doing WEIRD things:

1. It will not shift out of first gear like it always does.

2. The engine goes up to between 3,500-4,000 RPM's, and then it will come out of first gear and immeidately shift into the second gear (almost simultaneously). I watched the tachometer, and could see the shift points, but they're WAY off.

3. The car will NOT shift into the last gear. I was going 50, and the car was slightly above 4,000RPM.

This just came out of the blue. When I began my trip, the transmission was fine - no problems at all. The shifting was at the right point and very smooth as it always is. Even with the gears shifting at the wrong point, there is no slippage and no hesitation - it just seems that it's now shifting at the wrong times. I checked the transmission fluid, and it seemed fine. It was just serviced 1 year (10k) ago, and should be fine.

My questions:

1. Has anyone ever had something similiar happen to them?

2. I was in an accident with my 190e in late December. The right front passenger side was crunched pretty bad. They put a new front bumper on, not to mention a brand new radiator. Is there ANY chance that this might be caused from the work they did after the accident, or maybe from the accident itself?

Sorry for the long post, but thanks for reading and for your comments!!

Best regards-
Michael in Madison Wisconsin

On our '91 190E 2.3, the transmission failed by not shifting out of 1st. It gave no prior warning, but post repair, shifting is much smoother and more consistant than before - if that is related. I never saw signs that the fluid had overheated, condition looked good, and level was correct.

What the shop found on rebuild is that the fluid passages in the unit were plugged with eroded clutch material. I asked if driving pattern could have affected that, but did not get a definitive answer (we drive stretches of mountain declines where lower gears are used for speed control).

Steve