Merc Gearboxes

[television]

The reason for the question was, that in my opinion, the Merc autobox on my car is the sweetest gearbox I have come accross,I know RR used Chrysler boxes as they felt they were the best,Malcom will know better than me.
On my car sometimes I am not even aware of the change,particulaly when you feather the throttle

Yes this is the whole point shj they are nice boxes for the best part, with RR I only did cars up to the 70's. Their reason for USA boxes was through the difficulty of finding boxes in the Europe that you can marry up to 5 and 6 liter engines, plus the USA boxes are very smooth, apparently it has always been hard to make an auto box work well with a small engine, and it is not so far back in time that they were not available for small engines.
No there is no cost cutting from MB and the gearboxes, it cant be so.

 

[Parrot of Doom]

Volvo auto gearboxes are pretty good, on the 2 I had (850 and V70) they were very smooth, quite direct as well.

 

[television]

Volvo auto gearboxes are pretty good, on the 2 I had (850 and V70) they were very smooth, quite direct as well.

They are ZF as well, I cant fault my V70R gearbox, or car come to that

 

[eric242340]

Gentlemen, I am not the bringer of doom and gloom. ZF boxes are amongst the best in the world. And I can understand most of you are happy with your transmissions. What i am trying to point out here is that the ZF supplied for Benz has a higher failure rate the those for BMW, now could anyone give me a reason for this? If they are the same quality, then why this difference in failure? And please people dont start panicing about your autobox. On the whole most transmissions do work ok, I have to deal with the ones that fail.

 

[television]

Gentlemen, I am not the bringer of doom and gloom. ZF boxes are amongst the best in the world. And I can understand most of you are happy with your transmissions. What i am trying to point out here is that the ZF supplied for Benz has a higher failure rate the those for BMW, now could anyone give me a reason for this? If they are the same quality, then why this difference in failure? And please people dont start panicing about your autobox. On the whole most transmissions do work ok, I have to deal with the ones that fail.

Why do not you say why, also show that the failure rate is lower on BMW, as I said the forums that I have read say the opposite.

You cant just make a claim that there is a quality issue without any proof,or is it that they use plastic cases for the MB and alli for the BMW, plus you are not in a position to judge this.

 

[eric242340]

Why do not you say why, also show that the failure rate is lower on BMW, as I said the forums that I have read say the opposite.

You cant just make a claim that there is a quality issue without any proof,or is it that they use plastic cases for the MB and alli for the BMW, plus you are not in a position to judge this.

I am in a very good position to judge this as I work on both MB and BMW. But I dont want to be the judge and jury. I awaite further input. Only time will tell, and time has already told many stories.

 

[television]

I am in a very good position to judge this as I work on both MB and BMW. But I dont want to be the judge and jury. I awaite further input. Only time will tell, and time has already told many stories.

If you work on both and you have made the statement that the build quality is inferior for MB you must say why. No one here can work that out, if you are just knocking MB that is unkind and unjustified

I have never seen of heard of that comment before on any of the 4 forums that I take part in

 

[eric242340]

If you work on both and you have made the statement that the build quality is inferior for MB you must say why. No one here can work that out, if you are just knocking MB that is unkind and unjustified

I have never seen of heard of that comment before on any of the 4 forums that I take part in

I have not worked that out yet, although I have ideas. I love MB and I have not one bad word against MB, But the ZF tranny differences between MB and BMW i have not been able to explain and that makes me think.

 

[Ultymate]

Eric are you just basing your opinion on the work that passes through your workshop in China if so that is by any standards a pretty small dipcheck. Also have BMW gone through the sealed for life saga that M/B ran with if not this may have some bearing.

 

[television]

Eric are you just basing your opinion on the work that passes through your workshop in China if so that is by any standards a pretty small dipcheck. Also have BMW gone through the sealed for life saga that M/B ran with if not this may have some bearing.

Yes BMW have and are going through the same saga on sealed boxes

 

[Ultymate]

Thanks for that Malcolm, I suspect Erics tilting at windmills here I dont think his opinions based on enough solid data as I said in my previous post :neutral:

 

[television]

Thanks for that Malcolm, I suspect Erics tilting at windmills here I dont think his opinions based on enough solid data as I said in my previous post :neutral:

I did not join this to just argue with eric. If someone asked me what I thought of say a certain model Hitachi TV compared to a certain Bush or what ever, when they have the same Chassis that comes from Romania, the more expensive Hitachi will have the same problems as the cheaper Bush, be it poor soldering or power supplies blowing up, If the line timebase is underrated on one, it will be on the other too. I have no idea who paid what for their chassis, normally its based on quantity, there is no quality difference.

When eric said at the beginning that MB hold them to a price, this just cant be so as there is nowhere that corners can be cut, and to be truthful. the last thing that MB want is gearboxes that go wrong.

It cant be, and is not so.

 

[jibcl500]

The classic Range Rovers used ZF auto boxes, 3 and 4 speed, Ive broken 60 classic range rovers all 1990 to 1996 and Ive never had a bad autobox, these boxes can go on forever if sevice as they should be and most probs with the box are sorted with fresh oil and new filter.
The borg warner transfer box was the weak link. Porsche used the ZF in the 928.

jib

 

[eric242340]

Eric are you just basing your opinion on the work that passes through your workshop in China if so that is by any standards a pretty small dipcheck. Also have BMW gone through the sealed for life saga that M/B ran with if not this may have some bearing.

OK I will answer that with this BMW have and are still in the sealed for life sydrome and most of the failures are the transmission oil seal (before the pump on the imput shaft) But any failures are rare. As basing my thinking on the garage im with in China NO. I am basing this on the last 13 years in China, working with both BMW and Merc. As ive said many times before both BMW and Mercedes use or have used ZF boxes, but the highest failure rate was with and still is with Mercedes. OK most of the proplems do seem to come from the valve body.

Now on the newer models the 7 series BMW has oil seal proplems, but still the tranny is ok. On the other hand Mercedes has a serious oil leak where the electronics connect to the tranny and the transmission has not changed much from the older models. Look for yourself and see the difference between Merc and BMW Boxes today. The BMW box is a work horse, but the Merc box is 80s tech.

 

[television]

but the Merc box is 80s tech.

They are not, they are the same as BMW and all other cars that use them, that includes Volvo. there are no leaks on the later cars, and with BMW they are now changing the oil, as I said, read the BMW forums, all of the links were posted here some time back

 

[eric242340]

They are not, they are the same as BMW and all other cars that use them, that includes Volvo. there are no leaks on the later cars, and with BMW they are now changing the oil, as I said, read the BMW forums, all of the links were posted here some time back

Malcolm, my friend here works for the volvo factory and i can assure you their trannys are not like merc or bmw.

 

[television]

Malcolm, my friend here works for the volvo factory and i can assure you their trannys are not like merc or bmw.

Obviously with FWD

 

[Stevie A]

It's black, no it's white, no it's black, no it's white.

I can see the sides to both Malcolm and Eric's arguments. I think a lot of the time you can only go by personal experience so if Eric has seen more faulty Merc boxes than BMW boxes then that is a good point from Eric's experience.

The only thing I could think of about saving money on building the same box was cheaper metal going into one.

How many 1980's Mercedes had 722.4 boxes and how many have a similar one now? I'm gonna have a look on detail.ru about this.

Seems to me that the "sealed for life" saga has caused multiple box failures from what you read on here.

 

[television]

It's black, no it's white, no it's black, no it's white.

I can see the sides to both Malcolm and Eric's arguments. I think a lot of the time you can only go by personal experience so if Eric has seen more faulty Merc boxes than BMW boxes then that is a good point from Eric's experience.

The only thing I could think of about saving money on building the same box was cheaper metal going into one.

How many 1980's Mercedes had 722.4 boxes and how many have a similar one now? I'm gonna have a look on detail.ru about this.

Seems to me that the "sealed for life" saga has caused multiple box failures from what you read on here.

If you read all of the postings here, you will see that there is no way that MB can cut corners, on what, where. Eric is the only man that I know that has made this comment and has failed to show any single component where this is
so.
Do a search on the other big 3 forums, no one has ever made a comment like this.
Its all a load of talk with no fact what so ever. they dont even have 124 in China.

 

[Parrot of Doom]

Perhaps there have been more MB failures than BMW failures because nearly all MBs are automatic, there are lots more BMWs with manuals than MB.