This site is to help provide owner's with operational and service information pertaining to the 1990-1993 Mercedes 300E and 300TE 4MATIC. This vehicle is considered as one of the best handling and best engineered four wheel drive cars. The 4MATIC system always starts off in all-wheel-drive mode 1(35%F/65%R 4WD) but falls back to rear-wheel-drive (2WD) automatically when wheel slip is not sensed or 20KPH (12MPH) is reached. Thus allowing for the traditional feel of a rear wheel drive Mercedes. If wheel slip is sensed, then one of three 4WD modes is selected by the computer, Mode 1 is 35%f/65%r axle torque split, mode 2 is 50%f/50%r axle torque split and mode 3 adds locking the rear differential (aka ASD) to mode 2 50%/50%.
Please send email to benzjunkie@yahoo.ca if you have any 4matic questions and wouold like to post questions to many other 4MATIC owner's not on this group list.