I feel like I dodged a bullet…

[RunningTooHot]

I finished my new (old) car servicing routine of changing out ALL fluids on my “new” ’98 w210 OM606 turbo. My biggest concern was the transmission – it seems the early 722.6’s are something of a crapshoot with regards to longevity and/or self destruction.

When I dropped the pan there was no metal debris and no ‘sludgy’ gunk whatsoever – even on top of the conductor plate, where apparently deposits tend to form in the crevices. There wasn’t really much of anything on the pan magnet either. (The dealer must have added the magnet when it was serviced.) The fluid, with 41,000 miles on it, looked almost new – it was not discolored much at all! That’s amazing in consideration of the graphite friction discs, which tend to make the fluid dark.

So I think this validates the PO story of “all highway” use for this car. I suppose that it just stayed in 5th gear almost all the time, versus city driving where the discs would be subjected to normal wear from shifting all the time. Although there are no guarantees… this helps alleviate my concerns – one less reason to worry about being stranded in the middle of nowhere when I do some serious cross-country driving later this year. Yay!!!