I was honestly ready to push my 2013 E350 into the creek last Tuesday when the 7G Tronic transmission decided it had had enough of the Sharjah humidity and just refused to shift out of second gear on the way to Carrefour, leaving me crawling along the corniche at forty kilometers an hour with my hazards on and a queue of irritated drivers stacking up behind me like I was hosting a very slow parade. The car had been giving me warning signs for weeks with those lazy shifts when cold and a slight clunk when dropping into drive, but I kept putting it off because I knew the dealer was going to quote me a number that started with a five and ended with too many zeros, and I wasn't about to sink that kind of cash into a decade old sedan no matter how comfortable the seats are. My cousin's husband who runs a spare parts shop in Industrial Area 6 told me about these Mercedes Transmission Specialists Sharjah that apparently everyone in the local Merc WhatsApp groups swears by, and I figured at that point I had nothing to lose except maybe a diagnostic fee and a bit of dignity if they told me the whole box was scrap. Towed it over there on a flatbed feeling pretty defeated and honestly within an hour they had the pan off and showed me the conductor plate was covered in metal shavings from a failing solenoid and the fluid looked like burnt coffee, but instead of telling me I needed a whole new gearbox they just rebuilt the valve body and flushed the system properly with the right Fuchs fluid and I picked it up yesterday afternoon and the shifts are now so smooth I keep checking the mirror to see if I'm actually moving. I know it's only been a couple of days but I'm just so relieved there's a proper fix for these 722.9 boxes that doesn't involve selling a kidney or rolling the dice on a mystery used unit from Al Sajaa, and I wanted to put this out there for anyone else who's been staring at a transmission fault code on their W212 and wondering if they should just trade it in for a Sunny.
0