Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General General Engine HEAT

IMHO the biggest problem with the Contour with the Zetec is the fact that there is so much heat build up under the hood.

Every small gauge wire under my hood has crisp, cracking insulation. The wires after the multi-connector leading to the injectors and throttle position sensor are bare!

HORRIBLE design!

Well, like several mechanics have said... "it's just a throwawy car."

DB

My 98 Mercury Mystique has been said to have dry rott.
I was only wanting the VCT looked at and the guys said
I should take it to the dealership in town because a car
this new with only 70K miles should not be this bad.

All of the wires near the engine have the rott. Now my
question is should I repair the wires myself and risk
missing up the whole system or pay the dealer 1000$ for
just the part and maybe 11 hours of labor. That is just
not worth it to me.

I did read there was a wire harness kit for the 95-97
so that would save people money. Rather than 1K$ it
could be 250$. But my car is a 98 and is not coverd.

Does GM make the Ford cars? I think I'm not going to
buy another local made car. How do they stay in business
with such poor quality?

My money is not throwawy..

F that guy who said about the throwaway cars. i read that post the other week, your still pretty bitter about that. hell i would have flipped out on the guy personally. whoever talked to this mechanic should have asked what he drove.

GM makes Chevrolets, Pontiacs, Buicks, Oldsmobiles, Cadillacs, Saturns, Isuzu's, Opels, Vauxhalls, Saabs, GMC's, and indirectly makes Fiats and Alfas, and the like.

Ford makes Fords, Mercury's, Lincolns, Mazdas, Jaguars, Volvos, Aston Martins.

My feeling is that if you start messing with ANYTHING it will cause something else to break!

Yeah... I bought mine new... $16003.00 TT&L CASH!
Throwaway money!

DB

You know, the "throwaway" mechanic has a point.

Most Contours, not SVT's, but ones like mine, are a pretty poor design, and generally are not worth taking past 110,000 miles.

For example, the CD4E trans. We of course love stickshifts, but average American/Canadian driving a Contour, has his lever in "D". Why? Maybe North Americans generally have a lower intelligence or maybe more of a laziness? I don't want to get into a transmission flame war, but hey, how come in the rest of the world, 90-98% of cars are manual shift, here it is the opposite?

Anyway, back to my point, the CD4E is a [censored] design, with no trans filter. (there is a "strainer" though) CD4E's usually last between 75 and 120,000 miles. A transmission, whatever it is, should last the life of the car. Note what I said, "life of the car". An engine also should. The lifespan of these parts are essentially "the lifespan of the car". A drivetrain on a modern car should run 200,000 miles without rebuilding or major repairs, or more, with the recommended maintenance schedule.

100,000 miles is a lot less. And the Contique is essentially a boring family sedan, which used has no value because the trans (amoung other things) is a poor design.

Lets check out my u-pull boneyard I frequent:

There are 11 Contiques. 7 are 4-cyl. 10 are CD4E. 1 is a V6 5-speed. I asked for a trans (CD4E) a while ago, and the response was: "Sorry, they're all bad". The 5-spd. car was wrecked badly, and was a 95 model anyway. The rest of the automatic cars ranged between 1996 and 2000(newest Ford product there). 2000! And they were in the boneyard why? The transmission! The milage ranged from 78,500 on one and 124,000 on another (lo-hi). There are many other recent Ford products there as well.

But, the newest Saab there is a 1993 (164,000 miles) model, with a blown headgasket, easy fix.

The newest GM car is a 1994 "Dustbuster" minivan rollover.

Newest Mercedes-Benz is a 1982 300SD (over 250k mi)Turbo.

Newest Volvo is a 1989 240.

Newest Chrysler is a 1996 Concorde.

All of these cars had automatic transmissions.

What does this say for "Quality is Job 1" and such? What does it say for the design of the Contour?

just a thought.