Ok, so I have good news and bad news.

Inspecting the self leveling, I found the reservoir under the hood empty, so I filled it. This fixed 90% of the rear end problems, so I figured it meant that I need accumulators (and possibly more).

Well, then the story gets better - I had a flat tire (picked up a nail) and noticed that the shop across the street from where I stopped has a few Mercedes parked outside - Atwood European, owner/operator Andrew Atwood. While he fixed the tire, we inspected the underside, and found the accumulators and the shocks to be relatively new, and not leaking. A couple of top bushings, and I'm hooked up.

Then, the story gets worse. I believe that the problem that I had with difficult shifting might be misdiagnosed and actually a problem where it is not going into second ever. Now, it doesn't want to shift into fourth, but if you shift into nuetral and then back into drive (at 50mph) then it drops into fourth (and if you kick it down to third, it returns to fourth normally...) Anyway, I think this is the sign of a sick tranny, so I'm going to do a full service on it (with new Redline D4), and then I think I'm shopping for a clean used tranny...

Cell phone will be relegated to decoration, and I don't sit in the back, so I'll skip repairing the seats... (like I'm going to let someone else drive...)

-David