Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General General Just bought a contour

I have just made purchase of a 1996 Ford Contour GL with the 4 cylinder engine. It has 77,000 miles on it and I was just wondering if there is anything specific I should have checked out on the car before I drive it too much. I'm allready planning on taking it to Ford to make sure all the recalls have been done.

Congrats on the purchase, and Welcome Aboard!

What type of transmission do you have? Manual or Automatic.

Rather than taking the car to Ford, you can search for recalls right on ford.com with the VIN Number (on your registration).

That's pretty low mileage for a 96. Be sure to check out the Zetec forums (4 cylinder engine) for more specific answers regarding your engine.

Enjoy, and be sure to check back here for all your maintenance procedures and where to purchase parts. Most of us get all our Ford parts from Bill Jenkins. He works at a Lincoln/Mercury Dealership in Las Vegas, and hooks us up with good deals on Ford Parts.
http://www.signaturelm.com/frameset1.asp?LINK=Parts&MAIN=parts_wildcard1

If you have something wrong with your car, or want to give it a tuneup, you can do it yourself with our help, and save thousands of dollars in the long run.

If you do not have the maintenance records for your new car, I would recommend a complete tuneup of the car, and change out ALL the fluids (Coolant, Brake, Tranny, P/S). This gives you a benchmark for future maintenance. Most of these procedures are in the HOWTO section from the Main Page. Main Page->FAQ->MODIFICATIONS->HOWTO

Good Luck!

I think zgendron covered most of it. Regular maintenance should be your first priority.

Sorry I forgot to include that. But I am running the automatic transmission.

Auto tranny, huh? If you want a little performance boost, you might get yourself a SuperChip.

They don't help standard trannies much unless they're custom-programmed, but they make a pretty noticeable difference in acceleration when applied to a 'tour with an auto tranny, from what I hear...

Welcome!

I just now thought of this. Which repair manual should I get? The only two I know of are Chilton and Haynes. I'm not really sure on which one is better.

Both are only sorta good. So I'd say whatever is cheaper. I have a haynes. Most of the stuff I've done to my car, I just ask/look at how-to's on here for more complete information on how to do it. Also, for $8 you can get the Ford service CD from todras. It's packed with tons of information about your car. (A lot of it is schematics and information that is only really useful if you have an obd2 scanner, but it still has a lotta good stuff, and you may wanna get an obd2 scanner sometime in the future... www.obd-2.com ) Welcome to the forums, I have basically the same car as you do except with more miles and more mods, so if you have any questions, feel free to PM me.