PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum - View Single Post - '97 S420 Acceleration and trans jerking issues

tinypanzer · #5 03-24-2017, 08:30 PM

Thanks for the reply and suggestions. Since my indy just rebuilt this trans, I would suspect that any fluid migration issues would have been addressed, but it's certainly worth a check. Where is that module on my car?

Yes, this '97 is totally drive by wire even though it was made in late '96. I have found the throttle pot near the firewall on the driver's side. Interesting that it's a dual track pot, I'll check out the resistance values even though I agree, there should be a code if the values don't agree with each other.

My car has ESP, but not ASR (thank god). Not sure I would have bought an ASR car from this era after all the stuff I have read about the problems with it. ESP triangle does not come on during these episodes, and WOT acceleration is pretty good. It's more the problem of being in 4th or 5th at 35mph and wanting to accelerate... Often I have to give more than 1/2 throttle before it finally decides it needs to kick down. There's no feathering the pedal to go a little faster, you're either accelerating hard or not at all. Now, I'm not sure whether it really does need to kick down, or if it is lacking power in that RPM range for some reason and just doesn't have the oomph to speed up without a kickdown. The car being new to me doesn't help, I have no baseline to compare it against.