Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General Troubleshooting Am I being Charged To Much???????

I posted a few days ago about my 98 Ford Contour overheating. I took it to the Ford place and they first told me a sensor, 175.00 to fix it, yesterday i got a call now its the thermostate, today i get a call and i am told that the water pump is plastic and when it overheated it melted, so now i am up to 700.00 to fix my car????? Can this be right. I bought this car in 1999 and after 6 months every few months the "check engine light" comes on and i have spent thousands of dollars on this car and all Ford can tell me is Im out of warrenty and they cannot help me. This car is the car from hell, is 700.00 to much money?????

Yes. Sounds like it. The waterpump replacement part should be around $70, and it sure didn't take me more than hour to replace mine. Don't know how much labour they're trying to charge you for but sounds like way too much.

Id be real pissed off at the ford dealership if i were you.

An honest mechanic should be able to change the waterpump for less than $200. You're thermostat is probably OK, but they get changed sometimes because it's easier/cheaper than the pump when your guessing at what's wrong. You don't need a dealer for a WP change, which is not a big job and takes no special tools/equipment, as others have mentioned. If there's a garage near by, call them and see if they will change the WP on your car. No fancy testing, just basic mechanical stuff. Leave the dealer and save some money. I do think your temp sensor was actually dead from your previous post. (Hopefully thats all you'll have to pay for...)

The CEL light wont hurt anything and can probably be fixed for $2 - $200 depending on the actual cause(s). Lot's of folks can help you on these. See if the dealer knows the codes that the computer was logging if he tested this. (He may be guessing on this too... :rolleyes: )

Why would the watepump melt ??

If the waterpump was running, then it was circulating coolant which should have cooled down after passing through radiator which shouldn't have melted waterpump.

If waterpump wasn't running, then coolant wouldn't flow and the engine would overheat and be damaged, not the pump.

Experts, am I right in thinking that the mechanic is talking trash ??

I don't know about 98 Contours, but on my '95 Duratec, the water pump ("WP") had plastic fins that just fall apart over time. The WP still spins, but with out working fins and now plastic debris circulating, it causes vasilation (which is it spinning so fast that it creates air bubbles in your line.) Air in your coolant system, plus the fact that it's no longer really circulating is bad...very bad. Likely, your pump went first, then the engine overheated, which just sped up the water pump breaking even more.

On the '95 Duratec, one way they are shown to replace the water pump is to drop out the entire engine, which also means dropping the entire drivetrain. I guess there is another way to do it, but I never bothered to check into it.

Oh yeah, I believe the dealer charged me around $400 for the water pump replacement. (I had my own mechanic change out the thermostat first while we were troubleshooting the problem.) As it turns out, when my car overheated, it also broke my thermostat. So they both ended up getting replaced in the end. But the dealer only did the WP.