As posted below, I test drive a 86 190e 2.3 yesterday. Now that I think about it, I don't recall the car starting out of first unless I pushed the pedal all the way down to the kick down spot. Does this have the winter mode that it could have been in, or some simple reason why it didn't do this, or could there be transmission issues?
Thanks
Are you referring to manually up shifting the autotransmission?
Auto
Oops, no not manually upshifting it...just during normal driving in the D mode. Our E320 has the W and S modes next to the shifter and W starts it out of 2nd, so I thought even though I didn't see this feature on the 190, maybe it or something like it was turned on and I didn't notice, or the tranny has issues?
Normal. There's a kickdown switch under the accelerator for first gear start. Otherwise it will start in 2nd. The goal of the design was to save fuel. Maybe not a bad thing with gas prices like they are.
By the way, I saw on one of your posts that you read a 0-60 time for the 2.3
8-valve of 7.8 seconds? I don't think so. That was the measured 0-60 time for the 2.3-16 in Road and Track in 1986. Car & Driver got 7.3 with my car. The 8-valve will be lucky to hit 60 in under 10 seconds.The 2.3 you're looking at looks pretty dubious to me, with no records, several known problems, and rust issues. I'd walk away from that one at any price. The 2.6 you mentioned looks like it would be worth looking into, but don't fall in love until you have it thoroughly checked out. If it's solid, it could be a very nice highway cruiser. The only tip that something could be wrong is the price, but hey - maybe you got lucky.
Bill Balmer
1986 190e 2.3-16 first 16V in the US featured in Car & Driver, March 1986Normal... all MB started out second gear... few exceptions until 5 speed auto tranny came out... then they all starts from 1st.
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