Chevota,

Well, I didn't see the removed B3 clutch parts, but the worn-out nature of them was apparently obvious to the mechanic.

To reiterate what my original symptoms were:

- for the past year, the time it takes to engage reverse had slowly gotten longer, until it was up to 3-4 seconds. But, up until recently, it had still always engaged.

- recently, if the transmission was warm/hot, it had started to not engage at all. (If cold, it would still engage after 4+ seconds). To be more precise, after selecting reverse, I'd see the idle RPM drop a little, but there was no positive engagement of reverse. If I blipped the gas I'd get a slight amount of rear-ward motion, if on perfectly level ground (like my garage), but not enough to overcome any sort of slope (like a very loose fluid coupling). Sometimes, after a long while, and more throttle-blipping, it would finally engage (typically with a lurch, from the blipping of the throttle). Once engaged, it didn't seem to slip. But, if I put it out of gear, and then back into reverse, it would start the whole "not engaging" process all over again.

Following the repair, reverse engages positively within a second, as with a new/normal transmission. Engagement into Drive, as well as shifting in forward gears, was always fine, and was not affected by either the problem, nor its repair. (It is my understanding that there is another failure mode that can cause slow engagement into BOTH reverse and drive, but this is not the B3 clutch issue, and is far less frequent on these transmissions.)

BTW, in doing a Google on the key words 722.3, Mercedes, and transmission, I stumbled across a .pdf file that describes repair and diagnosis procedures for 722.3-722.6 transmissions. The link is http://w126.pp.ru/akp722.pdf This document specifically covers 1996 transmissions, but the 722.3xx versions described for the 1996 SL are basically pretty close to the transmission in W126's (probably due to the fact that this version of SL came out when the W126's were still in production).

It contains a short section on symptoms and probably causes, as well as the removal/repair/replace procedures. I wasn't trying to figure out how to do the work, but I did want to know about the most likely causes of my problem, in order to be able to have a partially-knowledgable conversation with the mechanic.



Bob Schleicher