Thanks for the suggestions, I will have to see if any of that helps. I really wish mercedes had made more diesels with manual transmissions. I hate the idea of the transmission being a $5k box of magic that you never know when it might fail and make the car basically worthless, but unfortunatly thats pretty much the way it is for a car this old. I think I must have selectively forgotten everything I have read about how awful these transmissions are when I liked the car othrerwise, but that obviously wasn't a good choice.