Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General General 95 Contour Automatic Transmission

Mom just bought a 95 Contour with V6 and automatic transmisson about 2 months ago. She called me in tears last nite saying not only did her transmission go out, but some low life hit her car parked in the Walmart parking lot and didn't even let a note. Not just a door ding, but creased half the length of the car! Anyhow, my question, her car only has 40,000 miles on it. Is this transmission known to have problems?

The CD4E has had many upgrades in its 'short' life...example..I recently replaced one in a 99 V6 SE , the brand new trans I fitted was three suffix levels later....BTW a whole new trans with t/converter was only $900....from us..HMS Inc

Damn Terry! Thats cheap.

2600 on replacement Number 1 at 45K

2500 on replacement Number 2 at 82K

I know your not including labor but they charged us over 1500 just for the trans.

So these trannies only last 40,000 miles? Now I know why I drive a VW. I've put 300,000+ miles on two of them now with no major work. If the Japs and the Germans...and even the Koreans now...can get it right, why the hail can't our country?!?!? And to think I was just thinking about buying a Mustang. Forget that!

very sorry to hear about your moms car....when i was researching before buying mine last year i came across a note that some of the atx's had problems right from the factory...many that were new developed some issue (dont know what) but ford replaced many of the transmissions without even attempting a repair on them...some are probably more prone to early death syndrome than others....

some have gone very early like your moms mine went at 89k and some on here have well over 120k miles on original atx so who knows????

if mom decides to keep and fix her tour make sure she buys the atx from terry h if avail...if she doesn't have a warranty it will cost her well over 2000 as stated in above posts for the repair...thank goodness i had a warranty when mine went out

Yes, fortunately/unfortunately I can change the tranny myself. Mom doesn't have a lot of money to work with so at least I can save her the labor cost. I'm a little upset right now with the guy the family buys all our used cars thru. He is usually very good about steering us away from models with known bad track records. Can't understand how this one got by him.

Our CD4Es are dogs. I've got a '98 V6 in my garage with a bad torque convertor and clutches. It's at 72K miles, and I even flushed it at the regular intervals! All tranny shops say you need to install an aftermarket external cooler in order to control the overheating problem our ATXs produce. Anyway, that's a cheap and worthwhile upgrade. You'll be well off if you do some internal upgrades during the rebuild... that's what I'm doing.

Where do you get a good inexpensive aftermarket external cooler from? About how much does it cost? Can I install it myself fairly easly?

You can get coolers all over the place for as low as $25. I got mine at the local U-haul shop (it's part of a tow package) for $40. haven't installed it yet but it's nothing anyone with basic tools can't do.

I'm a religious believer in auxilliary tranny coolers and have added one to every automatic tranny I have ever owned, most recently on our Jeep CJ7. That said, is there room anywhere to put one anywhere on a V6 Contour? The way everything is packed in there, it is questionable in my mind, without the benefit of having it in front of me to look at.