Ok for starters my car is a newly acquired 81 300sd. This car had been sitting for 2 years because of the broken B2 piston causing trans slippage.
I just changed out the broken B2 piston with the updated one with updated bushing on Thursday.
Drove the car about 40 miles on friday. It needed some Bowden cable adjustment that I did this morning. Drove it after that today about 15 miles and it shifted great.
Just before this drive I was doing some fan/radiator work and moved the oil cooler line into the path of the PS pump. Of course I didn't notice then drove the car 15 miles. Got home and oil was everywhere. So I did a temp repair on the hose and hopped in to go wash off the oil.

Now the car will not shift down, when I put it in drive it starts in top gear. If I manually shift it, it goes down to 2nd. No first even hitting the switch. It shifts fine when manually shifted(except no first). Heres the really fun part. It won't go into park, barely will go into reverse. If you shut the motor off, it will go into park. Park to reverse and back is fine, until you hit neutral then its a no go back to park again.

Any ideas? I am kinda stumped. I am a high level DIY guy but new to the benz's

Firstly, the story must be incomplete. There is no relationship between the performance of the transmission and the damaged oil cooler hose.

Second, how far did you drive it on that damaged hose...........and did it lose oil pressure.............and would you have noticed if it did?

Third. please explain..........."it won't go into park". Is it impossible to move the shifter to the park position? This would dictate a linkage problem between the shifter and the trans...........but, none of your work would send us in that direction.............so, again, the story is incomplete.

Sticky bowden cables typically stop the transmission from shifting up. Is it possible they could also stick in the other direction and stop the transmission from shifting down?

__________________
1977 300d 70k--sold 08
1985 300TD 185k+
1984 307d 126k--sold 8/03
1985 409d 65k--sold 06
1984 300SD 315k--daughter's car
1979 300SD 122k--sold 2/11
1999 Fuso FG Expedition Camper
1993 GMC Sierra 6.5 TD 4x4
1982 Bluebird Wanderlodge CAT 3208--Sold 2/13

Without a Bowden cable, there is no first gear and both the 2-3 and 3-4 shifts occur at at very low road speeds (12 mph and 20 mph approx.)

The trans and oil line is I am sure completely unrelated, it just happened at the same time so I figured I would give the whole story.

The car did not lose oil pressure and only lost a bit over a quart of oil total. Engine is fine.

When running, the shifter physically will not move into park and barely(with a bit of force) will go into reverse. Once it is shut off it will go right into park, no problem.

It seems like there is maybe a valve sticking. Figuring on pulling the valve body and cleaning it up, unless I get some other direction to go.

Bowden cable does feel like it is still functioning(slight resistance while pulling on the cable)

While the trans shifting characteristics are completely unrelated to the oil line issue, the fact that the problem occured immediately after cleaning up the issue with the oil line says that there is more to the story...........or this is just one fantastic coincidence.

I'm not fond of coincidences and believe that there are more details to the repair of the oil line and/or the cleanup of the oil.

Maybe the use of a pressure washer in the wrong area caused a problem with the linkage?

I think you've got to go over each detail of the process to repair the oil line and see if anything is related.

I actually didn't do any clean up, because I got to the car wash and noticed it wouldn't go into park and it wasn't shifting down on the way there, so I just came on home to figure out what was wrong. I have gone over the vacuum lines to make sure I didn't unplug any and they seem to be all good.

I guess a real thorough going over would be easier than pulling the valve body.

I agree with you about coincidence.

I'd look closely at the bowden cable since that is what you adjusted and it is directly related to the transmission.

__________________
1977 300d 70k--sold 08
1985 300TD 185k+
1984 307d 126k--sold 8/03
1985 409d 65k--sold 06
1984 300SD 315k--daughter's car
1979 300SD 122k--sold 2/11
1999 Fuso FG Expedition Camper
1993 GMC Sierra 6.5 TD 4x4
1982 Bluebird Wanderlodge CAT 3208--Sold 2/13