That doesn't sound too great as I have an ATX myself. A few questions though. Do you drive your Contour really hard? Like a lot of stop and go or heavy acceleration? Did you ever have your atx serviced at the 30,000 mile intervals like recommended? When you said halfway, I am assuming you meant halfway into the safe range on the dipstick. If your transmission was good and warmed up and you checked it while I idling in park and all that, I would not fill it past 3/4 up the dipstick. You want to leave it room in case you run it a bit warm one day although I think it has a breather. With factory charge mine is usually about 3/4 of the way up after its good and warmed up (100 miles). BTW, what kind of smell did you notice? Was that 30 minutes or miles? Let me know some more info. Hope you don't need a rebuild.
