Tranny leak
 

The automatic tranny in my 1989 300TE has developed a leak.

I got under the car and it seems to be coming from the solenoid kickdown switch (left side of tranny, looking towards the front).

Is it very difficult to replace the switch?

Does it involve taking down the tranny? Taking the tranny apart?

The car has almost 200K miles and it runs strongs and shifts well. I was thinking that if the replacment operation was a major one, this may be a good time to have the tranny overhauled.

I have not taken it to Enrique yet (Mr. M.B. Motors), I only discovered the leak yesterday.

Any thoughts, suggestions, comments?

Thank you.

Just so you know, Enrique installs rebuilt transmissions for your car, parts and labor included, for $1,500.00.

Howdy Paul.

Well, that is good to know. A $1,500.00 hit is not so bad. The car runs well and my son insists that he wants it when he turns 16 (less than a year away now).

BTW, over the summer he took a Japanese language class. He is serious about learning Japanese, do you have any suggestions?

If your son speaks Spanish, then he already has an advantage as far as pronunciation is concerned.

The vowels in Japanese (a, e, i, o, u) are pronounced exactly as they are in Spanish, and they never change.

My guess is that they made him learn two of the three alphabets which are used in Japanese (Hiragana and Katakana). It is important that he remember those. They also might have started him with the Kanji (Chinese characters), and the only way to learn them is to write them over and over and over again.

Is your son good with english grammar, i.e. knowing which words are the subject and object in a sentence?

If he is, then it is helpful. Japanese grammar is nothing like english. Spanish will appear closely related to english in comparison. Anyway, he needs to be able to identify quickly they subject and object in a sentence, because of the use of "wa", "ga", and "o". There is no equivalent word in english for wa, ga, and o, but he should know that the subject in a sentence is always followed by "wa", and that the object in a sentence is always followed by "ga" or "o", depending on the context.

Two examples:

I like music: Watashi wa ongaku ga suki desu.

I eat sushi: Watashi wa sushi o tabemasu.

There you go.

By the way, your son is very lucky to be able to drive a W124 wagon. I wish I had one now. I'm tired of putting plants and bags of mulch in the trunk of my E430.