I am new to the mercedes diesel thing so please forgive me for my lack of knowledge, I spend most of my time working on my 54 hudson hornet with a 500 hp 396. The question here is, I installed a kickdown cable I guess, it is on the passenger side of my 83 300sd and goes from the top of the throttle assembly to the tranny and then clips in, and the old one was not connected to anything inside the tranny so I figured that the new one did not need to be either. Today the car was slipping in between 2 and 3rd so I took it to one of my friends who owns a transmission shop and although he does not work on the mb trannys on of the the older techs there had. He said that the cable had to connect to something inside the tranny. Is this true, and if so can I connect without removing the valve body? Does anyone have an ecploded view of this? If not does anyone know of any good trustworthy mechanics in the Fort Worth Dallas area? I have already had a horrible time with one, and will not go back to him, thanks for the help.
Hudson.

That is the Bowden cable and it does attach to something inside the tranny. You will need to drop the tranny valve body to attach it.

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Jim

I know a trustworthy mechanic about 50 miles east of Dallas, he's worked on my car a couple times when I didn't have time to myself and he does a good job.

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1985 300D Turbo ~225k
2000 F350 (Powerstroke) 4X4, SWB, CC, SRW, 6spd ~148k
1999 International 4900, DT466e (250hp/660 ft/lbs), Allison MD3060 ~73k

With care and two pair of curved forceps, you can reattach the end of the control pressure (bowden) cable to the actuator arm inside the transmission without dropping the pan and valve body.

To do this, you have to support the transmission with a hydraulic jack, remove the bolts holding the rear transmission crossmember to the body and then drop the back of the transmission down as far as it will go. You will barely have enough room to see where the cable attaches to the transmission.

With a dental inspection mirror you can look into the opening for the cable and see the rod that it attaches to.

You will need a lot of patience, two pair of foreceps and a helper to manipulate and move the inner and outer parts of the cable along with the rod when attempting to reattach this thing. It's better if the engine isn't too hot either.

Routing is everything when replacing the cable. It wants to be pulled off to one side which doesn't allow the inner cable to move in a fair lead. If allowed to move this way, it WILL bind and cause you to need to rev the engine progressively higher to get the transmission to shift.

We used a pair of tie-wraps to secure the cable to the dipstick tube so that it ran fair to the transmission.

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Never a dull moment at Berry Hill Farm.

thanks ya'll have been a big help
Hudson

LOL - heck I can barely see with a bright light anymore. That is why I dropped the valve body to get it out of the way.

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Jim