Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General Troubleshooting Front Gravel Shield Gone Missing???

We have a 98 Mystique GS V6, during the course of replacing the driver side fog lamp I noticed that the "door" I had to open to gain access to the fog lamp does not currently exist. There appears to be evidence of a "gravel shield" or something that may have been presnt in the past but is now absent. I had the tranny changed just prior to the expiration of the warranty, I wonder....

Any help would be appreciated, also is any functionality lost without the missing "thing"?

I have a 98 tour and just replaced a fog lamp on the passenger side. I don't have the classical trap door either. Even though my manual says it's there, it's not and it looks like there was never one there to begin with. Is it possible the 98 Tours and Mystiques didn't have these doors?

My 98 has the doors. John, sounds like your lower splash shield is missing. It's there to deflect road debris and water from the radiator, oil filter, etc in that area. It can be ripped off if the car scrapes something or if you hit some road debris. IIRC, it's some $40 for the part, plus a couple bucks for the hardware (9 x T-27 screws)

I have noticed that many 98 and newer Mystiques do not have that shield. My 98 SVT does. I have not paid attention when looking under a 99 and newer Contour. Perhaps this is another example of decontenting.

Mine got riped off because my wife kept running up on curbs with it ive replaced 4 those things already. (ok ok ok 1 of them was my fault)

The screws holding the thing on are plasticand screw into some more plastic clips just stuck into holes in the frame. The screws get stripped really easy from being rescrewed in without finding the original spiral. The plugs also fall out of the body. But it sounds like they didn't put it back on at all. It shouldn't be able to fall off as it's also attached to the front wheel well liners.
Also another way of reading this is that the litle squares that pull down on each end of the splash shield are what's missing?.. Those can be tossed or not/ youre preference.

I think John's talking about the small square access panels in the big splash shield. They're held on by plastic fasteners which don't hold up to well to scrapes or repeated unfastening.

The Plastic shield was decontented with the 98.5.
So for those of you that DON'T have it, like me, then you might have a 98.5 Contour.


Pete...

i have a 95 mystique and i just took the hole thing off when i slamed it and i haven't had any problems and i go everywhere so i wouldn't worry about it to much

Darn decontention! Darn, darn, darn, darn!