2001 c32 amg transmition won't change up?

[parksie]

I've not used the car much lately but today being sunny ,finished work early to go for a drive!,once warmed up i noticed it seemed to be stuck in second gear & remained so till I got where I was heading.

Started up to move on & still the same?????

Any pointers prior to the call to the stealers?

[MarsellusWallace]

Sounds like your transmission has gone into 'safe' mode.Could be a number of things from a failing battery to a worn out valve block,or the electrical connections to it.

[parksie]

i have now tried charging the battery, disconnecting it [reboot] to no avail.

Got to wait nearly 2 weeks to get it into the dealers for Diagnostics!!

[Allandwf]

Was going to ask how you found the C32, I'm on the hunt for one at the moment, and was after some idea of how people found them.

[mbtech01]

i hope this isn't the cause of your problem but i've seen several mercedes in the last few months all suffering the same problem & all giving similar symptons to the one you describe. The transmission electrical plug seals become defective allowing transmission oil to contaminate the wiring loom. For some reason the oil then gets sucked up the loom all the way back to the transmission control module which in your case will be under the passenger front floor carpet & foot plate. When inspecting the control module it will probably be soaking wet & full of transmission oil. As you will probably guess this then shorts out various circuits resulting in poor gear changes & loss of gears. Mercedes have modified the electrical plug on the gearbox several times each time basically modifying the type of seal used. When carrying out the repair you will need a new electrical plug, new electronic transmission control module & new wiring loom which will involve lifting the front floor carpets, center console, possibly front seats etc. As you will probably gather it ain't a cheap repair !
As previously said i hope this isn't the root cause of your problem but it is something to seriously consider.

[wotnot]

This happened to my C32 within a month of me buying it (story of my life). It's over two years ago now but I believe it had something to do with the gearbox oil cooler. I've tried finding the invoice from the garage to find out exactly what they did but I seem to have misplaced it. As soon as I track it down I'll post again with some more details.

[parksie]

Hey thanks for your interest in my problem


don't fancy ever having to do that repair to the loom!!!!, but the better news is I was able to get the into a Independent shop, they read the fault codes & there were literally hundreds & hundreds of listed faults mainly due to Emissions /low battery power/gearbox,with so many faults they wiped the memory went for a test drive?,the problem has gone gears change smoothly once more ,they re checked the codes & all were clear.

So it turned out to be a happy day for now, fingers crossed.

The techs at the garage couldn't really explain why it is now working properly, any thoughts MBtech???

[parksie]

Allandwf said:

Was going to ask how you found the C32, I'm on the hunt for one at the moment, and was after some idea of how people found them.

very powerful, hence heavy[ish] on fuel, modest serving costs, practical understated lines a real wolf in sheep's clothing .

Edited by parksie on Saturday 16th April 17:16

[mbtech01]

Glad you got problem sorted. Only thing i can think of is that maybe your battery is getting past its sell by date ? Has car had to be jump started of late or is it sluggish when turning over. If the control modules detect undervoltage they get all upset & can start doing strange things.
By erasing & resetting fault memories will hopefully overcome problem, all you can do is drive vehicle for a week or so & monitor its behaviour. If the fault does reoccurr at least you've had the fault memories cleaned down & it should be easy to see the cause of problem when rescanned.
Anyway hope your car now behaves itself & fingers crossed it won't reoccurr.

[TISPKJ]

Guys, forgive me, just filling in time at work like you do, but if this oil running up the wiring loom seems to be fairly common / well known problem, why not cut into the loom a few inches before the ecu unit and encase in some type of resin ? at least that way the oil would only get that far.

Or am I missing something .....