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well, I never thought the day would come... but my mom's car is in the shop for the FIRST TIME EVER for an unschedualed problem. We have owned her since 1999 (98 model) with only 300 miles (got a kick ass deal on it). Today... roughly 6 years and 108K miles later, shes getting looked at. Now onto the problem... about 2 week ago we got a HUGE snow storm here in michigan, burried the town, the snow at points we as high as the front bumper (my tour was to low to drive around... on the stock suspension...) I was taking my girlfriend home and as I pull into my driveway... I get stuck, put it into reverse and I get a LOUD grinding noise... like a pulley rubbing on plastic... I shut off the car to see a giant piece of plastic poking out... so I Yank it out of there... I find that its the bumper underbody splash guard  I dont know how it got knocked off... but there werent even any bolts left. I put the plastic piece in the garage, I figured I would get some bolts for it later and reinstall it, I get the car unstuck and pull it into the garage, figured everything was fine. yesterday, I come home from Lapeer, and my mom says her car is making a grinding type of noise... its constant and in complete relation to the speed of the car. If anybody is woundering the splash guard I pulled out was jammed under the driver side of the car. I know this is a contour website (DURH!) but does anybody here have any experiance with Grand Prix's? it has the 3.8L engine.
98 Corolla LE 1.8L DOHC 1ZZFE
TEIN H.Tech Springs
Tokico HP series Struts
Short ram air intake
Tsudo Axel Back Exhaust
... if a jelly fish stung me.. would you pee on the wound?
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If it makes the noise only when the car is moving, I'd guess a plastic splash guard is rubbing on the tire. Check the driver side wheel well.
Must be that jumbly-wumbly thing happening again.
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Originally posted by TourDeForce:
If it makes the noise only when the car is moving, I'd guess a plastic splash guard is rubbing on the tire. Check the driver side wheel well.
Same thing happened in my Regal, it's hard to tell if its rubbing by looking at it. I had to have someone look at the hweel when i was moving to find it was just BARELY touching.
2006 Pontiac G6 3900SFI GTP Coupe
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Originally posted by TourDeForce:
If it makes the noise only when the car is moving, I'd guess a plastic splash guard is rubbing on the tire. Check the driver side wheel well.
well the splash guard is in the trunk right now, its going to be attached when I can get some of those lame ass Plastic bolts for it, I know the dealer is going to charge me a dollar a piece for those bastards to.
98 Corolla LE 1.8L DOHC 1ZZFE
TEIN H.Tech Springs
Tokico HP series Struts
Short ram air intake
Tsudo Axel Back Exhaust
... if a jelly fish stung me.. would you pee on the wound?
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If I understood correctly that piece of plastic bumper splash guard you yanked out is the one that's mounted across the front end of the car, underneath where the radiator is located? On my 97 sport V6 mtx Contour that splash guard is bolted on with 9 steel hex head screws, not sure what Ford used on a 98. In its normal position the splash guard is "pointing" to the rear of the car while somewhat towards the ground. When you got stuck in the deep snow in front of your garage and tried to back off, the splash guard got cought by the snow on the ground it had slide over at the time you pulled up, then when car moved back, it got flipped forward by the snow it scooped up, torned off of the mounting screws, and poked out, resulting in either remiander of the splash guard or distorted wheel-well splash guard rubbing the wheel/tire/driving components and giving off that grinding sound. This is only my wild guess and I could be wrong. I'm in southern Ontario Canada and we've got lots of snow here too. I usually shovel the driveway before pulling up when there is a pile-up. As of the GM 3.8L I'm personally not a fan of it. Though GM has worked most of the bugs out of it through these many years and today the 3800 II engine seems to be pretty reliable, fuel efficient, and with a lot of low end torque, it's an old push rod design with heavy die-cast iron block. Unlike our Duratec, it doesn't rev high, and when it's forced to it sounds suffering. That's partly why when I bought GM I went to the Olds Intrigue with 3.5L DOHC (same GM W-body as G'Prix). Too bad this great 3.5 got discontinued when Olds went 6 feet under. When you drive a GM W-body you need to forget most, if not all, of what handling is about. Good luck to your mom's Tour. 
1997 Contour Sport Duratec MTX
2000 Olds Intrigue GLS Sterling Edition
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Originally posted by sylin:
If I understood correctly...
Good luck to your mom's Tour.
Unfortunately, you didn't. His mum drives a 1998 Pontiac Grand Prix.
As far as this, the best I can tell you Alias, is to check if anything is rubbing on the tires. I've had this happen before and paid to have it diagnosed [on the ZX2] and got raped when they found nothing but still had to pay for the diagnostic. Turned out something was rubbing the inside of the front wheel.
-SAV
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Originally posted by SAV:
Originally posted by sylin:
If I understood correctly...
Good luck to your mom's Tour.
Unfortunately, you didn't. His mum drives a 1998 Pontiac Grand Prix.
As far as this, the best I can tell you Alias, is to check if anything is rubbing on the tires. I've had this happen before and paid to have it diagnosed [on the ZX2] and got raped when they found nothing but still had to pay for the diagnostic. Turned out something was rubbing the inside of the front wheel.
-SAV
Thanks for the help everybody, the mechanic called yesterday, and said he couldnt find anything wrong. The grinding noise went away, he theorised. That when I drove it in the nasty snow storm we got, the piece of ice that knocked off the Splash guard got caught somewhere up in the engine bay, near a pulley or near a tire. He charged 25$ to reattach the spash guard (almost ALL in parts, WHY ARE PLASTIC SCREWS SO EXPENSIVE?!?!?! Stupid GM). Either way, shes happy nothing was really wrong with it... And she got to drive around in a 92 lumina (my Grandma's extra car) for a couple of days... Man that thing is a beast.
98 Corolla LE 1.8L DOHC 1ZZFE
TEIN H.Tech Springs
Tokico HP series Struts
Short ram air intake
Tsudo Axel Back Exhaust
... if a jelly fish stung me.. would you pee on the wound?
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i would of went to a hardware store and got screws there that would fit it u spend like 5 cents a peice
1999 Ford Contour SE Zetec with 137k miles.
AIM Name: ContourAlf
Yahoo IM: Contour_Freak
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