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Old 09-19-2015, 04:38 PM
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Join Date: Nov 2011
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R170 SLK Manual Transmission - Linkage?

Hi all, I have a '01 SLK320 with the 6-speed manual transmission. I've had some minor sloppiness in the shifter for a while but nothing really too bad. Last night I drove the car and was backing it into its spot as normal. As I moved the shifter from reverse to neutral (which involves lifting it over the gate slightly) it seemed to "get loose" and just flop around. The car is now in neutral but won't shift into any gear (feels like the gates have vanished - shifter just flops around loosely with no perceptible engagement of anything). The clutch seems fine - pedal moves in and out like before with no noises or odd behaviours. There were / are no weird noises, "bangs" or anything like that. One minute fine, next minute nothin'

So...

I pulled the shifter off wondering if something had gotten loose between the shifter and the rod or whatever else it connects to under there. Stuff was a little dirty but seemed otherwise okay. I cleaned up what I could and reassembled everything - here's what it looks like now:

The shifter rod (that the knob sits on) connects to a push/pull rod that extends down into the underbelly of the car somewhere (presumably connecting to a ball on the back of the transmission that actuated the gear selection rods / forks internally). I'm wondering if there's a simple way to diagnose this - my next step is (I suppose) to put the car in the air and feel up above the back of the transmission to see if anything feels loose or "off" up there, or see whatever I can see.

Question: Should I be anticipating having to drop the whole transmission out at this point? If so I suppose it's a good time to do the clutch and upgrade it also but I rather avoid it if I can. My wallet and schedule don't really agree with that right now.

Has anyone here encountered anything like this before? Am I on the right track with my line of thinking and is there anything else obvious / simple I could check to minimize digging around? I have a suspicion this might be something simple (it didn't seem to be a "kaboom" failure at all) and I don't want to overreact by dropping transmissions and stuff if I don't really need to, or is that delusional optimism?

TIA!

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R170 SLK Manual Transmission - Linkage?-image.jpg  

Last edited by OverSteer; 09-19-2015 at 05:33 PM. Reason: Photo / more info
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Old 09-25-2015, 12:24 AM
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Update: SOLVED!

Here's what happened - the issue was linkage related as I suspected. I disassembled the shifter assembly to expose the shift lever itself - it has two points of connection. One (which is visible as soon as you take the boot off) transmits left and right movements of the shifter to the transmission via rotation of the gear selector mechanism inside the transmissions (i.e. "chooses" 1st or 2nd, 3rd or 4th or 5th or 6th depending on which gear pair is selected by the front-to-back position of the fork). This connection was fine. The second is not visible - you have to disassemble the whole shifter and remove the foam insert in the floor to see how it works. See the photos. The front-to-back movements of the shifter are transmitted via a linkage mechanism that sits below the floor (but above the output section of the transmission / driveshaft). The shifter lever has a circle with a hole in it, into which sits a horizontally-mounted pin / shaft from the linkage assembly (piece #20 in the diagram). When the shifter is moved back and forth, the pin moves the linkage and transmits this movement directly to the transmission internally (i.e. moves the selector forks front or back and selects particular gear pairs - 1/2, 3/4 or 5/6). There is supposed to be a clip on the end of the pin to keep it from sliding out of the hole in the bushing at the bottom of the gear selector. This clip evidently disappeared at some point along the line so when the gear selector was moved all the way over (into reverse) it was able to pull free.

I was able to reach into the hole and re-insert the pin so now the transmission can be placed into any gear but to prevent a recurrence a new clip was needed. The good folks at pelican have suggested a clip (actually for automatics, but appears to be the same size) which should be here in a day or two.

I'm very happy that this ended up being a $3.75 repair. I can guarantee that if I'd taken the car to a transmission shop they'd have said "oh it's an internal transmission issue - we have to pull it all apart or replace it" and probably quoted $3k or more. This is why I like doing things myself. Can't wait to get it all back together and out for a spin soon! Maybe an AMG v6 engine upgrade on the horizon too... Thinking about it...

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