Water entered the gear selector
 

a little water spilled onto my c200 99'. car refused to change gears so i disconnected battery and waited.

After that the car managed to allow me to limp back home but no gear change and no gear display on the dashboard.

What should i be looking at first?

Thanks in advanced

Matt

The search function above - there's several threads on the subject.

Hi,

Did that first but yielded no answers. The search phrase to use?

cdplayer
 

Well I hope the thing drys out. The sensors down in the selector box are not comunicating right now. Be thankful you spilled water and not soda.
I have a 2001 S500. Just above the gear selector is the cup holders. Bad idea. The PO apparently spilled too much and often. That the gear selector could not tell if it was in park or drive. So the car would not start sometimes. This is a very dangerous design flaw. There have been accidents where for no reason and at freeway speeds the car suddenly goes into reverse.

I had to have the selector replaced. This cost around $600 just for the part.

Hopefully for you yours will return to proper function. If you bought the car used, the sensors in the gear selector box are probably full of crud.
If this is the first time this has happen (say you are the origonal owner )
then maybe a gentle use of a hair dryer would work. Good luck:kid:

Cost to repair on mid-80's POS GM Car:
1. Windex 0.10
2. Paper Towel 0.05
3. (Possible) Lightbulb (if happened at night and it shattered) 1.00
4. Labor (owner-replaceable with a screwdriver) 0.00

This Cost:
1. Parts $600
2. Dealer Labor $300 (est)

This is progress????

I earn a living with technology, and I like the intelligent application of it; but I really don't think it's reasonable for an engineer to have failed to consider that this could happen, and not to have added at least a splash shield over the sensitive parts.

not just gear selector, but the surrounding switches which may be affected.
the degree of damage may be upwards of $1000 depending on how much
electrical damage occured (shorted out). best to try and dry out and not
use and cross your fingers. remember reading where one person used hair
dryer as well.

having recently been thru this,you can buy the whole assembly from dealer and put it in[not hard].BUT then you have to flat bed to dealer to have the new part programmed electronically to the car before it will come out of park.the dealers don't care that this may happen miles away because this is a major part of their security system so that car cannot be stolen and then have another part fitted so it can be driven.

OK Guys went to get the problem checked out. Since the C200 W202 was built in 2000, it has a fully electronic shift lever unit.

They ran diagnostics and as expected the gear shift lever wasn't responding. They than told me to change the whole unit at a cost of about USD800 or so.

Having read this forum on similar problems, I then proceeded to tell them to let me have a go at blowing compressed air into the whole unit after it was taken out. Blew for about 5 minutes into all holes I could see.

Plugged it back in and voila........it worked. !!!:)

Thanks guys for the excellent posts and replies on all threads.

Matt

out-freekin-standing !!!! :)