Yeah I am on e30tech, wealth of resources there. The m20 motor was used in so many variations that you can pretty much get any configuration you want. From a high compression N/A motor to a low compression turbo motor all using OEM parts. You can even put in an E36 M3 crank with little work to the block and build yourself a 3.0L stroker, pretty neat. I had the coolant channels on the head welded to decrease the chance of gasket slip under boost. The factory eta rods are forged, the pistons are going to be the weakest link. Too bad the head only has two valves per cylinder and is single cam, that's why I need such a huge turbo to make my power goal of about 350-400 WHP and over 400 WTQ. I hope to hit full boost at around 3500 rpm and will be shifting it at 7K.
It's a real treat to work on a RWD car after the Mystique, had the tranny out in a little over an hour, motor was stripped to the bare block and ready to pull in another 2 hours. I took me like 9 hours to install headers in the Mystique! I was honestly thinking of shoving in a 3.0L Duratec and running a Lincoln LS tranny, would have been very cost efficient, mostly for the sound and you can make power so easily without barely touching the motor. I wasn't sure how strong that tranny is though.
I have a spare 2.5 Duratec still, I'm stealing the EDIS ignition system off it to run on the E30, the stock Contour coil pack is really stout. I will need lots of little bits off that motor, probably going to use the idle air control valve on it also. I will have weld the Duratec crank trigger wheel onto the m20 crank etc to make it work. I wanted to ask someone here if the contour runs a EDIS module, or is it integrated into the ECU? If it is I was hoping to just grab one off a Explorer or Windstar. I just glad I kept all these parts from my Contour parts car I had, turns out most guys running stand alone use Ford EDIS ingition.