Originally posted by bill c.:
Hi everybody, my name is Bill and I'm a Contour owner.
Actually I kinda like the little car but but it has a few idiosyncrocies that have me wondering. It's a '95 Zetec ATX that I bought for my teenage daughter and I'd like to get it somewhat dependable and safe for her. I already replaced the front rotors and the rear springs & struts as well as brakes, tires, plugs, wires, filters, fluids etc.
My 2 main concerns now are with the tranny having a hard 1-2 upshift (bangs into 2nd) and the motor running a little hot.

The harsh upshift is worse under hard acceleration and not as noticable under easy acceleration.

The temp needle (with ac on & outside temps in 80-90s) runs mostly on the L with an occasional dip into the red in heavy traffic. The car never has boiled over but AC efficiancy drops off.

Any help with these issues would be appreciated plus any Contour specific tidbits I might ought to be aware of. I've been lurking here for about a week already and I've learned a bunch just digging through the archives. I'm a VW mechanic by trade (retired actually) and these here American cars kinda throw me.





How to fix 1 -2 bang shift

I had that problem to, replaced the sensor and it went away.

Secondly I have a 96 and my temp. needle is all over the place, usally by ML. I took it to a few shops who all said the car is not that hot. Secondly there is a TSB for "temp. gauge giving inaccurate readings", or something like that. If you want it fixed that bad you might have to do the TSB.

Mine though has never gone into the red, if it does that often you may have a problem.