The accelerator pedal on our beautiful '88 244GL ($750, 165k miles, prettiest car in Louisville) has been getting a bit stiff this winter. In order to free it up, I had to tap it with my foot. After it broke free, it always seemed to operate properly. Well, never ignore even innocent symptoms on a brick. I let the car sit for three days while I drove another 244, and this morning the overdrive (AW 70 tranny) didn't engage until I hat 55 mph!

I got on the freeway, disengaged and engaged the overdrive with the shift knob switch (seemed to be working fine), and in order to further diagnose the problem, accelerated to engage the kickdown function. The tranny downshifted to third, but overdrive did not reengage! A few seconds later, the tranny began to slip. Now I was really worried!

I pulled over on I-71 and popped the hood. It was immediately clear what the problem was. A bunch of the kickdown cable was out of its sheath and off the accelerator spool. Was it broken or just binding? I pushed the cable back in, worked it back and forth a few times and it seemed to loosen up. Just binding! I hopped back in the car and drove on in to without further incident.

Lessons: (1) A sticky accelerator may be due to a binding kickdown cable. (2) Sometimes an overdrive/transmission problem is not the end of the world!
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'88 240GL, '90 240DL, '91 240