Chuck

I need to look at the car again to understand your note - I am trying to understand how to adjust the cable. Without the car beside me I can't visualize exactly where the adjuster is. I want to do this because the tranny is reluctant to downshift on steady uphills unless I kick it down by flooring the gas pedal . The kickdown switch works fine!

Several posters have told me it's the cable adjustment at fault. The poor girl loses rpm and you have to downshift with the shifter (oh for a manual tranny on my 380SL)

However I don't know if I should be tightening or loosening said cable.

My interest in vac comes from a flare problem, especially on a 2/3 upshift - which I've been told could be a vacuum problem to the modulator valve, a modulator valve adjustment problem or a poor modulator valve itself. However if the tranny is like my 300SD's, until the vac system is correct then further diagnosis is tricky to impossible. The interesting twist is that the flare is at its worst when the car is cold and it moderates as the engine and tranny reach full operating temp.

Am I on the right track?

RL

I am a neophyte at automatic trannys as my SD's has luckily been AOK and I have never had to footer around with it. Definitely at the 101 stage of learning.