Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General Troubleshooting strong sulfur smell

well definitely post an update b/c my car is doing that crazy stuff right now and im only at 46k. i havent had my cel checked yet but i just started smelling something today that would lean me towards the o2 sensors going bad. i just did the fuel pump replacement to get away from the "bucking" but w/my luck on this car its still doing it. mine was only happening while the tank was about 1/2 or less but now it seems to do it whenever it wants and it actually cut off today while sitting in a parking lot just idling.

My 99 'tour is doing the same thing as all of you seem to be describing. Aren't emissions related parts covered under warranty for longer than the normal warranty?

sounds like you need to replace the cats

Be careful with those cats going bad. Had a real fun time with my old POS cavilier and its cat going south. Car ran like absolute crap. Took it to the house, opened the hood. This nice rush of heatsoaked air flooded out, and the exhaust manifold was glowing yellow. Man, that is a sight I won't soon forget. Course there was also the time when I managed to sling all the belts off of it at an intersection. That is a very bad sinking feeling when all the idiot lights come on one right after the other. Put them on, but the last one was twisted and I couldn't get it to right itself so I pulled all the sparkplug wires and cranked it. Success! Just couldnt remember what wires went where....hahahaaa Put it all back together and it started. Drove it home no powersteering or power brakes! hahahaa.....umm but you were saying about your cat? JK

L8R
Rich

I'm currently having the same problem,anyone know the fix?

Once again.

The rotten egg odor is caused by lean to rich mixture fluxuations. The mixture is not being controlled enough to stay within the narrow range that it should. Bad catalytic convertors cannot make this smell, but the cause of this smell can kill the catalytic convertors.

An overheated or glowing catalytic convertor is getting raw gasoline from a missing cylinder or other causes, The gasoline is "burning" inside the catalytic convertor.

To get rid of that smell on mine and the flashing and sometimes staying on CEL light, I had to replace the Four oxygen sensors, spark plugs, spark plug wires, ran some cleaner through the intake before i did all of this and cleaned the Mass Air Flow sensor. The light has not come back on since and the rotten egg smell only comes back if I have gotten on it for a while. Even then you can only smell it if your outside the car and it goes away quickly. Ford said that was normal. Before I did all this when I would first start it in the morning, the exhaust smelled like raw gas. I felt that it was stupid to do a tune-up on it without replacing the oxygen sensors, if the sensors were bad. Then it would of fouled the plugs out. If I put new sensors in and no tune-up then the black coated plugs would of fouled out the oxygen sensors. I did the intake cleaning because it was cheap and needed to be done before i did the tune-up. The MAF sensor cleaning was easy and also need to be done. To do all of this it cost me just in parts $350.00. I did the labor myself. It was well worth it because it runs like a new one now and the gas mileage is back where it ought to be. Its funny, it always seemed that the gas mileage never was really that bad despite the rich running condition. I just got tired of everyone saying "Who Farted?"

Blaze