Just thought I would share a little brain-dead moment I had last night. Over the past week, we've had bitterly cold temperatures here in Northern IL. On Tuesday, my boys drove the 240D to school, but couldn't get it started to drive home from school. I eventually got it started the next day when it warmed up a little, and had no further problems. The boys took it to school again yesterday and made it there and back with no problems.

Yesterday evening, I had to go somewhere and decided I would take the Benz. I went to start it up, ran through the glow cycle, which seemed fine, but when I went to crank it, nothing. Nada. No starter movement, no click, etc. So I took a different car where I needed to go and when I got back, started troubleshooting. I put a voltmeter on the battery and it showed 12.7 volts, certainly enough to crank. I put a battery charger on it anyway and it showed 75% charged. I started looking for loose connections, grounds, etc. but couldn't find anything. By this point I was thinking either my solenoid or starter had completely crapped out.

I wasn't looking forward to replacing either, but decided to take a break and go look at my (crappy) Haynes manual to see how much work that would entail. I opened it to the section on starters and began by reading in the troubleshooting section, "first ensure that your shift lever (automatic) is in the 'Park' or 'Neutral' position." Hmm . . . I went back out to the garage to check and sure enough, when he pulled into the garage the kid left it in Drive and just shut it off. I hadn't bothered to check that before starting. I was mildly peeved at the boy, but I quickly got over that when I realized this meant no further problems to solve.

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-Scott J
1978 240D