Quote:
Originally Posted by mbdoc
Good feedback!
Sorry to hear that you had to shell out $2K on such a new car though.
Make sure to have the fluid changed every 30K miles!
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Other information I gathered from my conversation with the technician:
The 5-speed automatics and 7-speed automatics of this era both suffer from electronic issues in the transmissions; the speed sensors or other components in the vale body fail so the car no longer "knows" how to shift correctly and remains in one gear. Shutting the car off and turning it on again clears the fault, but then the failure occurs again with increasing frequency until the component fails completely. On the 5-speed transmissions, there is a conductor plate that can be changed independent of the actual valve body, and
if the fault is within the conductor plate, this will solve the issue. However, the 7-speed requires replacement of the actual valve body;the conductor plate cannot be replaced independently on the 7-speed. I could not get the tech to say whether he thought that fluid change intervals had any impact on
this issue, other than simply stating that never changing the fluid is always a bad idea. He suggested (as mbdoc stated above) that 30K fluid/filter intervals for the transmission are what he'd do if he owned a car with either of these transmissions, or any other transmission ever put in a MB. As I had mine changed at around 25K and 50K, I would tend to think that the problem is not so much the condition of the fluid, but faulty electronic parts in the initial units.
I hope this information is helpful to other folks who have similar issues--I am not a auto tech, and have no way of knowing if what I was told is 100% accurate. This particular technician has always been honest with me.