Have just bought an '83 mercedes with the 5-cylinder turbo diesel and an automatic. It runs pretty darn well for a car that old but it does have a few problems. The one in question here is the tendency to lose power and fall on it's face on take off. From a dead stop it is unresponsive to the throttle at first then will kick down and take off like you lit a fire under it if you mash the pedal. If you are driving at road speeds, slow down and then try to speed back up it acts exactly like a manual transmission that is in too high a gear. If you drop the shifter all the way down you feel it downshift and then it takes off in a much more respectable fashion. I suspect a timing issue, can anyone tell me where to start?

 

Already took care of the valve adjustment and the fuel filters... How do I go about adjusting the transmission? That's outside the area of my experience.