c43 - gearbox OK with holding onto gears or downchanging?
Discussion
I'm getting seriously tempted by a C43 for practical transport and spotted this on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQgB7XpvPN8
In the clip lower gears are being held onto quite a bit and there are nice early downchanges too - is this the 'box doing its thing or is the driver perhaps manually selecting?
And that leads me to the next question - do these gearboxes have any problem with either holding onto lower gears while decelerating or manually downchanging, e.g. if you wanted to be in a lower gear before turning into a corner?
My experience of auto gearboxes only relates to old-school (and non-Merc) ones. For example, the box would simply change up gear if you took your foot off the throttle. And I remember being told once that (some?) autos don't like decelerating in a lower gear (as opposed to allowing it to change up) - I was basically told it will wear out faster if I did it. We're talking a 1980 gearbox though.
I know the gearbox is always one of the key issues when buying a C43 and I wouldn't want to contribute to a 'box's early demise. I'm also interested to hear how the behaves generally.
Thanks.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQgB7XpvPN8
In the clip lower gears are being held onto quite a bit and there are nice early downchanges too - is this the 'box doing its thing or is the driver perhaps manually selecting?
And that leads me to the next question - do these gearboxes have any problem with either holding onto lower gears while decelerating or manually downchanging, e.g. if you wanted to be in a lower gear before turning into a corner?
My experience of auto gearboxes only relates to old-school (and non-Merc) ones. For example, the box would simply change up gear if you took your foot off the throttle. And I remember being told once that (some?) autos don't like decelerating in a lower gear (as opposed to allowing it to change up) - I was basically told it will wear out faster if I did it. We're talking a 1980 gearbox though.
I know the gearbox is always one of the key issues when buying a C43 and I wouldn't want to contribute to a 'box's early demise. I'm also interested to hear how the behaves generally.
Thanks.
Down changes are slow-ish (compared to, say, a later Switchtronic boxes).
I've never tried to dowmshift at too high a speed for any give gear (er.....why would I?).
Holding onto lower gears works very well. If you leave it in 2nd or 3rd and nail it at anything aboove 2000rpm the acceleration is pretty brutal - the torque converter is locked up and all your right foot action is transalated into forward monentum.
I often leave it third for give-and-take country roads. I sometimes pop it into 2nd or third when travelling across London - if only to play tunes with the V8 and exhaust.
I've never tried to dowmshift at too high a speed for any give gear (er.....why would I?).
Holding onto lower gears works very well. If you leave it in 2nd or 3rd and nail it at anything aboove 2000rpm the acceleration is pretty brutal - the torque converter is locked up and all your right foot action is transalated into forward monentum.
I often leave it third for give-and-take country roads. I sometimes pop it into 2nd or third when travelling across London - if only to play tunes with the V8 and exhaust.
The merc gearboxes with the gated shift are pretty good at downshifting by 'manually' selecting gears using the stick. It can be a bit slow and it can help to use the right foot to bring up the revs if downchanging. Some other non-Mercedes are incredibly slow to use the stick to change down gears. They're clearly not designed for it and you'll get as much as a 5 second delay before it changes the gear. So the Merc box does seem very responsive and like it's designed to work with you as much as possible for an auto.
You could visit an auto specialist to get it tweaked (at risk of course) because with the older cars there's a T-shaped adjuster under a rubber cover on the box that controls how firm the shift is. But I'm sure the c43 box is electronic and this may be far harder to acheive.
You could visit an auto specialist to get it tweaked (at risk of course) because with the older cars there's a T-shaped adjuster under a rubber cover on the box that controls how firm the shift is. But I'm sure the c43 box is electronic and this may be far harder to acheive.
Interesting, thanks. So is the gearbox adaptive (e.g. if you're being heavy with the right foot it will automatically hold onto gears longer and downchange a bit sooner)? Just curious.
Holding onto 2nd in busy London traffic sounds right up my street - I often get 15mpg from my Alfa around town for similar reasons!
Holding onto 2nd in busy London traffic sounds right up my street - I often get 15mpg from my Alfa around town for similar reasons!
Mine's pretty good compared to other autos I've driven. Although there are only two regulars, one being a 1990 BMW 750i, and the other being a 2005 Micra 1.3.
Reflecting the above posts, for spirited driving, holding third is good, loads of roll on and properly quick over 3500rpm with a really nice V8 roar. More American sounding than a European sounding Audi 4.2.
It's OK on downchanging, but I've confused it a couple of times in D mode with a 'confidence dab' on the way into a corner and it changes up while you're off the throttle and you find yourself wating for the kickdown on the way out.
Other than that, it's everything I expected out of a slushbox.
Reflecting the above posts, for spirited driving, holding third is good, loads of roll on and properly quick over 3500rpm with a really nice V8 roar. More American sounding than a European sounding Audi 4.2.
It's OK on downchanging, but I've confused it a couple of times in D mode with a 'confidence dab' on the way into a corner and it changes up while you're off the throttle and you find yourself wating for the kickdown on the way out.
Other than that, it's everything I expected out of a slushbox.
I've listened carefully to the clip. So far as I can tell, the driver is holding the transmission in second gear, occasionally moving up to third, then coming back to second.
The C43 AMG is (I believe) fitted with the 722.6 transmission. This is a modern electronic box with adaptive software (i.e. it modifies the shift points to suit your driving style which it learns). It is still in use in the cheaper, smaller engined cars (the big motors all have the 7G-Tronic box these days--how stupid is that? It is the small engines which need more gears; the big motors need fewer, but I digress). Like all Mercedes for decades now it also has a transmission gate which is suited to manual shifting between ranges. This is encouraged; entirely permissible; will not harm the gearbox (unless, of course, you exceed a given gear's maximum speed). It is a delight to use in practice.
Changes are generally pretty fast on any post-1985 Mercedes auto, be it four or five speed. On the 722.6 they are very impressively executed. Sure, the box is not Ferrari Enzo 80ms fast: it's an auto, after all. But changes in my experience are faster and, more to the point, infinitely smoother than I could manage with a clutch and stick. There is very little lag between commanding a shift and it actually happening. Most of the time it is done pretty much instantly. And in any event, you learn the car's behavior, anticipating the very slight delay, feathering the throttle where this proves beneficial and so on.
When pressing on along a challenging road, I tend to leave the transmission in third, occasionally slotting down to second for lower speed corners, perhaps moving up to fourth and fifth as I go through 90 or 100mph on the straights, then back to third as the speed falls below 80, using the engine to steady the car under braking. It is a very satisfying way to drive.
The C43 AMG is (I believe) fitted with the 722.6 transmission. This is a modern electronic box with adaptive software (i.e. it modifies the shift points to suit your driving style which it learns). It is still in use in the cheaper, smaller engined cars (the big motors all have the 7G-Tronic box these days--how stupid is that? It is the small engines which need more gears; the big motors need fewer, but I digress). Like all Mercedes for decades now it also has a transmission gate which is suited to manual shifting between ranges. This is encouraged; entirely permissible; will not harm the gearbox (unless, of course, you exceed a given gear's maximum speed). It is a delight to use in practice.
Changes are generally pretty fast on any post-1985 Mercedes auto, be it four or five speed. On the 722.6 they are very impressively executed. Sure, the box is not Ferrari Enzo 80ms fast: it's an auto, after all. But changes in my experience are faster and, more to the point, infinitely smoother than I could manage with a clutch and stick. There is very little lag between commanding a shift and it actually happening. Most of the time it is done pretty much instantly. And in any event, you learn the car's behavior, anticipating the very slight delay, feathering the throttle where this proves beneficial and so on.
When pressing on along a challenging road, I tend to leave the transmission in third, occasionally slotting down to second for lower speed corners, perhaps moving up to fourth and fifth as I go through 90 or 100mph on the straights, then back to third as the speed falls below 80, using the engine to steady the car under braking. It is a very satisfying way to drive.
One caveat here - these gearboxes are notoriuosly fragile in a C43. that's why I didn't play around too much with mine - but I did indeed knock it down into 3 to maximise the kick in the back. But the 'boxes in the two I owned did get confused from time to time and I was worried that this might be the onset of potential trouble...
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