Any of you have experience shopping for car parts on Ebay?

Holmes I'm not sure where you're located right now, I know  you were in SB at one point, but I got a mercedez shop down in Mexico I go to. Extremely good extremely CHEAP. Unbelievably cheap 

Yeah i'm still in Santa Barbara. 

My car won't even make it there because my roommate borrowed the car today and pretty much gave him a big warning lol. 

I took it to a shop to have them source the transmission. HOWEVER i'm having an epiphany: I just changed my mind (for now) about the used transmission, something just doesn't seem right. 

I'm going to do a series of fluid changes starting tomorrow and see what happens.

I'm not the biggest car nerd but i'm not stupid neither, especially when it comes to a car i'm VERY familiar with.

The few shops have been doing a little too much upselling for me to believe this bs. 

Symptom for my car is that the fluid is dark as fuck, resulting in the tranny is acting funny. It's been the case since I brought the car in around January.

Even when this happened, it was due to certain conditions i.e: Power load, fluid temperatures, etc. Some mechanic at the local Benz dealer took my car for a test drive and didn't know what I was talking about.

i'm not surprised since most of the time the transmission was acting normal until these past 2weeks. Therefore this lead me to believe it is the FLUID itself that needs to be changed. To top things off, these guys did not really do anything about my transmission. They only went as far as looking at the fluid (it was ALL about the fluid) and jumping to the conclusion "yeah, your fluid is dark so we'll rebuild you a transmission for $5-7k, please." 

None suggested trying out a fluid change, let alone sourcing a new transmission which is a cheaper alternative.

A buddy of mine in his 40s told me about flushing the fluids back when the problem occured. The dude knows a lot about the brand's cars and has worked on his own AMGs. I got thrown off because these salesmen were saying it was too "risky" for the transmission (look up "flushing transmission risk"), so I sat on the problem. Until i get proven wrong about my car's situation, FUCK the stealerships :/

I'm changing fluids

Do a search for mobile mechanics on Craigslist there are some good ones. Fuck rebuilding it and mechanics telling you that I'd fuck with them back. But yes flushing the transmission could fuck it up more but that's always what you do before doing a tranny overhaul anyway. 

Guru, Usually when automatic transmissions are having problems, it's not the fluid. Automatic trannys are probably the most intricate part in your car. There are bands and clutches that can get worn down. If the car has a lot of mileage, and the tranny is slipping, changing the fluid may make it worse because the particles in the fluid actually help the bands to grip. The new fluid will be slippery.

If it's hard-shifting, you may need a band adjustment or to replace the solenoids. Which is a lot cheaper than a rebuild. NEVER take it to a stealership. They will take you for a ride.

I once revived a vehicle that I bought for my business for super cheap because the tranny was slipping. I changed the tranny filter, fluid and put some Lucas Transmission Fix in it. I would say... drain a little fluid (if you have a drain plug) and replace it with Lucas transmission fix while keeping the old fluid. You need to drain some so you don't overfill  the tranny fluid. Also, only add/check the fluid while the engine is running.

This is a really cheap way to try to fix your problem that's worked for me in the past. If this doesn't help you, check the local salvage yard. A lot of times they'll have a wrecked car with a perfectly good transmission.

Yeah so I called them Friday morning and told them to cancel the used transmission search. I went for the fluid change instead of flushing, the car is a 258k miles

Later in the afternoon the chief mechanic called me trying SO hard to advise me not to change the fluid and that it would be a waste of $200. I went over to check the fluid that had been drained, dark as fuck. The Chief Mechanic was like "i've been in this business for 25yrs, you're young, you're going to have to trust somebody at some point blah blah blah" All that did not phase me because I told myself that NO MATTER what they say, i'll stick to my plan. I was firm with him and told him to change it. Him and another mechanic giggled in disbelief. Whatever....

I went back to the shop almost 2hrs later when they finished the fluid change and test-drive. The chief mechanic was like "I hate to admit it but the car runs fine for now" So I took the car out and stretched its legs, the powertrain is flawless. I drove down to L.A yesterday and the gas mileage has improved too :)

Anyways It turned out that the transmission filter was getting clogged because of the transmission residue. There is undoubtedly more laying around so i'll do another fuild drain to slowly get some of it out.

Getting another transmission would have easily been a $3000 mistake had I not listened to my intuition.

@infinity and Manwhore

Thanks for the tips.

I just refused to believe a transmission unit that's similar to the ones used to support some of AMG's most powerful cars pre-2012, is going to fail due to some mechanical failure now.

Not saying they're bulletproof, but Mercedes powertrain is no jello. My decision came down mostly to that, how well taken care of the car has been and the Mercedes forum. 

Fuck that's awesome bro. I completely forgot about just changing the fluid, not flushing it. I swear I kinda meant that when I said don't flush it! :p Good shit. I've had stuff like this happen so many times simply because I did my own research. Kudos 

Yeah dude, sorry I didn't mention those codes earlier lol. $70 for an OBD2 reader is a fucking steal. But $700 for a fluid and filter change? What the gawdamn fuck dude. You got ramrodded. 

The technician bought the electronic components for no more than $300. 4 quarts of tranny fluid and a filter straight from our local dealership, which was an easy +$130.

Total came up to $689.xx for the whole service

Still tho.. your first move is always to buy your car's manual so you know what the fuck's up. I own the manual for each of my vehicles when I walk into an auto mechanic's I know what I'm talking about. Saves me thousands a year. Fucking millions probably. 

I had multiple electrical problems with my motorcycle the last couple months, the fuckers that tried to steal it really racked some shit up. I hired a guy to come out here he couldn't fix it. I ended up only paying him for part of the job (resplicing the ignition wires). Sure I could have taken a crack at it myself but this is a motorcycle I want a professional. Anyway that didn't solve it, even consulting multiple mechanic shops, the bike still wouldn't start- I didn't pay shit. But still I had a massive issue. I bought the manual, tinkered around, replaced the ignition switch, ended up almost by accident realizing the battery was making the whole system act up, so I jumped the bike using a car and boom the bish started right up. That shit took two months to figure out, my mechanic was impressed. So I take it in and do the advanced rider's course at Harley Davidson and my instructor points out my fucking headlight is out. FUCK. So I remove the whole front fairing, uninstall the headlight assembly, thinking it's the bulb (hoping anyway), and the bulb is in fucking perfect condition. That blows because that means it's a more serious problem. Well I read through the manual and start troubleshooting, take it to a shop and just sorta nicely barrage my way into the garage and start using some of their tools LOL. I know enough to actually get the owner of the place interested in the issue, he's a nice guy I like him, as well as one of the bike mechanics. If I'd just been a dude off the street with no knowledge they would have made me just drop it off while they diagnosed the thing for a couple hours which I would have had to pay for. Instead we're all on this motherfucker trying to figure it out. We try everything, people are going on their fucking lunch break we're still tinkering around. We troubleshoot the entire electrical system and I learn a TON. So after two hours I've got two options.. either run a new headlight system from the front directly to the battery, which would cost about $140 out the door, and still wouldn't solve the actual problem would just be going around it, or replace the whole left controller system, which would be $250+. Anyway we're still trying to figure it out and I grab the left controller harness and turn it over and there's a rip in it. I spread the tear and see a fucking severed wire, the color wire we'd figured out ran power back to the headlight. Holy shit. Dudes had randomly turned the blade the wrong way when they were stealing it and severed a wire completely by accident. Bitches. So we spliced that back together and boom my HID is back on. BOOM. Fully functioning bike. The owner only charges me 25 bucks, and I tip the mechanic another $20. Everyone's happy. I'll be taking my bike out tonight to go hit on yo momma

How does a flush and a filter swap constitute electrical components? 

Lol i hope this makes sense

My fluid got dark again within a short period of time because I only did a fluid change. Rather do that than flush all at once and risk damaging my tranny.

The downside of this is that it is a slower process and there are still dark residues. This means I plan on going through several fluid changes before they're all rinsed out.

I also got codes p0700 and p0715 which usually pertains to the conductor plate replacement on these cars. It's supposedly a common issue and dark fluid just happens to make things worse for the conductor plates which has sensors and a plug housing.

I decided at 261000 miles I might as well get a new plate.

The car is still not perfect, but runs better with new fluid.  

My code reader cannot see the error codes anymore, they're still embedded in the computer making the tranny act up.

At this point i'm supposed to have a shop with a Mercedes-only program erase the codes and reprogram the tranny.

Dude look that shit up online and do it yourself. It's complicated but usually easily doable. I had to reset my Honda it was a retarded set of speed maneuvers. Gay as fuck but it worked