ok my sister came here fome texas with a 96 ford contour with 107,000 miles on it. she says she needs me to do a few things to it for her. i take it for a ride. good for city driving but, on the exspressway,wow does not go over 75 when at 50 when you hit the gas it shakes real bad. i ask her how long it has done that she said since she bought it. that was a month ago. i asked her how much she paid for it she said 4,000. i about smaked her. what could make the car do that. i am lost. any thoughts. i was told to make a big bomb out of it. cant do that its a contour must be saved. lol.
shocks or struts?
ours kinda shakes a bit, not bad, but noticeable
thats what sucks about buying a pre owned car, you dont know how it's been taken care of
But it won't go over 75, bad cat? vacuum leak? You should post this in troubleshooting. You might even find it moved there.
Check plugs and wires too.....
i ment to put it in troubleshooting. i dont know how i put it here. i was looking for it this moring and could not find it becuse it was in general. sorry guys. its my fault i'll try not to do this again. thanks for the replys i will look in to it.
I had almost the same problem, when I switched back from 17s to stock. My car couldn't go over 35mph!!! I was shocked and lost (cause I could do XXXmph with 17"s). Also, when it topped out at 35mph, the traction control light came on. Does your sister's car do it? If yes... well my problem was is that I had bigger rear (195/75/14) tires than front (195/65/14). So I switched them, now the car runs perfectly. 17"s were better though...
The shaking over 50, if its only on acceleration then its the CV joints. Im having the exact same problem with them...
my old 95 taurus would always shake really bad when i hit 65, so bad that no cd would play in my cd player!
I figured out that my wheels were messed up, either i had bent rims or non-balanced/aligned tires. I just got rid of it for my SVT.
...but it sounds like that has something to do with the engine or tranny.
today i took the car to autozone cuz the cel was flashing. and they told me that cylinders 3 and 4 were misfireing. so i am going to replace the wires and plugs. now the shakeing is not the tires cuz i took the tires from my contour and put them on her car and it still happend. my car dont shake. i am thinking cv joints also. and the catalyc converter is pluged up so that could also be why it is so slow. i dont know if it could make the car shake. o and if i cut the catalyc converter off and replaced it with a stright pipe. would that be leagle. someone said it is not. i dont know i will try to figer it out i will let you know if i need help. thanks.
the tours and stiques have three cats. two pre-cats and one main cat. the main cat is probably what is clogged. I think that as long as you have good emissions then you can take either the pre-cats out or the main cat.
I could be wrong on all of this. But I do know about the emissions thing. As long as emissions are good they could give a care less.
I know for sure that removing catalytic converter is illegal. At least in Connecticut it is. No repair shop will remove it, they are stricked.