Hi all,

Our new to us 2005 CLK 500 has developed an issue. Start car, back out of space, shift to Drive, drive away...no issues. Go to park, and shifter will not go past neutral if my foot is on the brake. Release brake, and shifts up to reverse and park no problem. Also, I can shut the car off, and it will shift to park without issue. Doesn't do it all the time, but most of the time. Also worth noting that the car drives fine otherwise, and the correct gear is indicated in the dash display.

I've googled this, and it seems to be a pretty common issue with the A209, as well as with several other platforms. Fix seems to be to replace the shift lever / module assembly. Does this sound about right?

Part is available, R&R doesn't seem terribly difficult, and I'm decent with tools, so I'm thinking of just tackling this project on my own...any pitfalls I might run into? I did find one rebuild site that seemed to say that if I didn't have my unit rebuilt, I would run into 'programming issues'...any truth to that?

Last question (for now, anyway)...is this one of those 'gateway faults', as in, this is the first indicator of a more major failure? In other words, should I not drive it further until I replace the module?

Thanks

Toby

Shifter assembly is the fix for that. On the 209 it's plug and play. no programming required.

Thanks Paul...

I received the new shifter today, PN A 203 267 9124, which all sources say is the latest, greatest part for my car. I also purchased a spare black bushing, and a couple of spare clips, just in case.

But the lower arm of this shifter has some sort of preinstalled, 2 piece bushing, as well as a captive clip (pic attached) I'm wondering if this is an upgrade to the old method of attachment, or if I need to remove these parts, and replace with the black bushing / lose clip prior to install.

any chance you know?

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