I feel for you man, except my expenses came in this order. Loss of power steering fluid= new rack and pinion= $600, get car back, have had bad rod for a about a year, just waiting for enough money for 3.0. Two days later, the car is knocking like a son of a biatch. Now the car has been in the shop for over a month, and I should be getting it back tomorrow or saturday =$3000+. Don't worry it gets worse before it gets better. The worse thing though is that I'm in high school and I've had to drive the mini van for the past month.
Vans may have been cool in the 70's, but now it's a
. Don't worry dude, the contour is a great car, and everything will work out, now the only thing I can say is to make sure you don't run it too hard and keep plenty of oil in her.
oh yea and also it helps me join traffic. noone wants to cut me off once they see the damage 
