I also thought it was interesting that neither one of these two MBZ shops would have thought that it might be necessary to turn off the car again in limp mode to get it to engage from R to FWD as I had learned from pure trial and error. Both pushed the vehicle into their shop. But maybe this is unusual and only particular to my problem?

Can anyone lead me to a resource that would tell me which other Mercedes yrs./models used the same 722.6 as my 99 320S. This just so I can look at a potential junkyard swap as an alternate though i recognize the risks inherent.