Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General Troubleshooting A week in the life of a Contour owner

This has been my week as a Contour owner:
6 days ago, Replaced both upsteam O2 sensors. Then air cond. freaked out. Now only works on defrost.
4 days ago, car sometimes will not start. I think its the starter going bad. Later, car overheated. Burned the [censored] out of my arm (its bad) trying to add water.
3 days ago, Replaced thermostat. Still way hot. Removed waterpúmp, it was perfectly fine. Found lots of oil in water and went to get a rad flush.
2days ago, leaking from thermostat housing. Took apart to find O-ring broke. O-ring idea stupid, siliconed housing instead.
Last nite all lights went out except headlights. After a harrowing drive home, found that a small tap on the switch and they will come back on. New rattleing sound. Maybe belt tensioner.
Today tranny very erratic, shifts in and out of nuetral all the time. Up and down the gears. Now wondering if tranny cooler is leaking into radiator. Also today I got creased by a guy backing up.
This car is a 98 with 56000 miles on it and I always ran Mobil 1 in it. I am so fed up with this car. Thanks for letting me rant, John

sounds like you doging the car.. not replacing the O ring and putting int sealant is asking for trouble... and tapping the light switch and getting it to work and not fixing it is just plain stupid.. you know it needs service and are planning on tapping it again sometime in the future if the lights go out.. they might not come on the next time you tap it.. and when the starter seemed a little sluggish what did you check to see what the problem was??? probably nothing?? well you will be back with more bad news to post its just a matter of time...
hope this helps.

Dude, you have absolutely no idea the amount of time and money I´ve spent keeping this thing on the road. My hands are consistantly scratched up from repairing it.
P.S. you spelled dogging wrong.

Junk that duratec And get a ZETEC tour My zetec has 134,000 miles on it and the car is 100% original , except the original brakes were replaced at 129,000 miles . Your tranny problem might be the tranny range sensor that is hooked up to your shifter . Or the TSS sensor.

Starsky, thanks for the ideas but I actually found that my tranny oil line was busted inside the radiator. Its a heat exchanger system. It was mixing the cooling system water with tranny oil. That caused both the strange tranny behaviour, (no oil) and the overheating problem, (poor circulation) at the same time. Monday, having a shop install new radiator. Thanks again, John

Sounds like your switch is bad. I replaced mine a few years ago and found the insides of it all carboned up. Mine was also flakey before it died, sometimes the light would go off when you a pothole, sometimes not.