Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums Branches New England official summer bash thread....

Food list if people want to bring stuff;

Chips/dip

potatoe salad

macaroni salad

any other kind of salad

deserts

gatorade(or similiar)

I will have bud light, sam adams summer ale, soda, and mixed drinks along with hamburgers/hotdogs, bbq chicken and steaks.

I will take donations for the beer, bar drinks and grilling food to help with the costs.

If you can't bring anything that is okay like I said donations will be exepted.

If there is any other kind of beer you want please bring it along. I will make stuff that isn't taken on the list.


very important note...If you are not of legal age to drink please police yourself..if you appear unable to drive you will be spending the night...We don't need to have any horror stories and I don't feel like going to jail for serving minors and the like....lets have a great time together!!!!

My car is doing its usual "I'm gonna break on you just before you try to get to a meet" ... (overheating issues; today with my dad changed coolant, swapped out waterpump, thermostat, and ECT ... now I either have air in the system or another issue, because it's running even warmer!)

FWIW my black-impeller waterpump was still in 100% condition when we swapped it out even at 75K miles; I already knew that wasn't the problem but preventative maintenance is a good thing.

Working on it more tomorrow, and if it's not fixed then I'll drop it off someplace this week to diagnose, since I *really* don't have the time right now to be working on this stuff (especially now as I need a reliable vehicle, traveling all over MA weekly once school starts next week). I'll definitely be at the meet for one day at least, it'll just depend whether I bring a shiny red Contour or a shiny red convertible.

As far as mods go at this meet... I need help with regular maintence issues, due to a lack of skill and tools. I need to change my PCV valve, which requires a torx wrench, and my temp sender, which requires an oxygen cylinder wrench. If anyone can help me with this while I am there, I would appreciate it.

When all the work was done I took it for a short 5-mile run around the neighborhood. Within three miles it had shot up to "L" in NORMAL and both fans had turned on high-speed. Touching the hoses was impossible they were so hot by the time I had gotten back home. The guage seemed to stabilize between A and L on my second 5-mile run, although of course that is pretty warm. Before today, I could drive 40 minutes at moderate speeds (40mph) until problems kicked in once I got into a busy town and low speeds; now they're going immediately ... although granted the kinks after the changes haven't worked out yet. Perhaps I am lucky and it's just air in the system or sensor shock, but given my history with cars in general it's almost never something simple!

I'd love to wait until next weekend so we can scan it and see what it's doing in terms of temperature, but I absolutely must have a working car by that coming Tuesday and waiting till this weekend is cutting it far too close.

I did find an old nest deep in the engine too, resting on the ATX .. haha .. cleaned that bugger out. Can't imagine when it was built, as I've driven the car almost daily for over a year now with no vacations.

your best bet to try and get the air of the motor is to jack up the front of the car while it is running.
this will help move the air bubble to the radiatior and then out the overflow.
you might have to keep ti jacked up for a little while.
we do this at the shop with 2.5L subarus, they suck to burp, we just put the front arms of the lift under the front and lift away.

Matt where did you fill the coolant from? when we fill the cars we feed the coolant in at the thermostatuntil it over flows then go to the overflow tank

Brian - we filled at the overflow tank. Your way seems to make more sense, but then again you know more about the cars than I do .. this was my first coolant change ever by myself. I think it's pretty obvious I'm not mechanically inclined

ElKy - sounds like a good idea, assuming of course air is my problem. I'll give it a go in a few hours after the Sunday morning routine and some research.

matt also take the overflow tank cap off when you do this, it will give the air someplace to go


and with that fans coming on your are right the temp shuold be hitting 212 F

Well the temp guage is stabilizing now, although much higher than it should be (averages between M and A on short trips). The coolant did go down a bit in the reserve tank, so I think we did work out some air bubbles by taking off the cap and idling, (then running with cap on for short trips a few hours apart).

My dad discovered that Autozone gave us a much higher thermostat than was originally in there (195 degree as opposed to 188) which may be contributing to the higher reading. Also, according to this, it's entirely possible we didn't install it correctly. However, both low speed and high speed fans are turning on even on these short trips. Dad insists that since it's still in 'normal' range it's perfectly fine to drive, where I am *highly* paranoid and therefore uncomfortable with the fact that the fans are turning on so quickly ... so he's taking my car to work tomorrow while I take his. If nothing stabilizes by tomorrow afternoon, or he gets stuck on the way to/from work, it's going to a mechanic that evening. If it remains stable (and possibly iff the fans remain off at normal speeds), then we may end up doing a second coolant change and swap with a 180 degree thermostat , which I've seen recommended on the boards.

Skunk ... sorry to get this OT (hey, what are NECEGers for?) ... if I have any more to say I'll start a new topic.