Bad tire alignment can decrease your MPG, make wheels work against each other, and wear out tires by causing bad tread wear patterns. Bent a wheel got to get it fixed.Is important to avoid excessive wear on tires and vehicle parts. Northeast roads might be a little to harsh for SE suspension it seems. Also brakes can be a problem seizing calipers in winter with salt mixed in. This V-6 is a great engine in my opinion. I would buy the car again and I might just buy an SVT next spring. The V-6 seems to be a real tight engine when cold, it really stumbles, very dangerous. Lets see if they keep their promise, appointment next Tuesday.
I was promised by the dealer that if the problem cropped up in the near future it would taken care of. He said Ford cheaped out and should have replaced the bearing, well now they will have to do more work. A friend, a mechanic said this was temporary fix to a more serious problem, dealer disagreed. Then I noticed clunking noise from same wheel. Anyway brought the car in repeatedly for noises from same wheel. Its a '96 Contour SE V-6, 5-speed with 39,000 miles on it.
#Ford ontour ailgnment drivers#
But,if Honda Accord V6 came with a stick I would have bought it.Īnyone else have this problem? Anyway, When I bought the car it had a bad wheel alignment at 6,000 miles the inside edge of the drivers side from tire was practically worn out. Having said that, I love driving it it's a car that like to run. My mechanic said the transmission is a Mazda unit, so you may want find out more about that. There was silence until 54K when the clutch snapped in two pieces and I had to pay out of my pocket. (Imagine, a thief assisted with customer service.) Eighth, the battery put a bullet in its head at 40K. While out, my blue backlit CD player was stolen and dealer replaced it with a green backlit one. Seventh, my sunroof went out at 35K and dealer sent my car to another company to be repaired.
At this time the engine light was back on and again the dealer found the problem was the O2 sensor and replaced it. Sixth, the A/C went out at 33K and the dealer had to replace O-rings, expansion valve and other parts to fix the A/C. It was OK for about three months, since then it been on 50% of the time. Fifth, at about 30K the engine light came on, the dealer downloaded the information from the OBDII and found it was the O2 sensor and replace it. The dealer replaced it with a 98' model which was backlit blue (with the lights on) and did not match my green backlit dash. Third, my CD player went bonkers at about 25K. Second, I noticed the front wheels were out of alignment at 18K (Ford won't cover this past 12K) and it cost me two new tires. The Duratec and Zetec are very Japanese-like: they truly need to rev, so it's worth learning MTX to have fun with this car (that's exactly what I did.)įirst, I made the dealer replace my carpet because it did not fit, two weeks later I spilled 44 oz fruit punch on it(Murphy's Law). I actually think the 96 Mystique rental had slightly better road feel (near perfect ride/handling trade-off), but this platform needed a few more horses under the hood (or, at least, accessible horses - 4cyl MTX is probably quite acceptable). I bought a 6cyl MTX Contour in 1998 and the experience is completely different. I drove the car during Texas summer, so the A/C did not help with the performance.Īlthough I was quite unsatisfied with the 4cyl ATX drivetrain, I really liked the car. To get any performance out of the car, I had to keep constant pressure on the accelerator. Granted, this was a rental car with 17K, but the tranny reminded me of an mid-80s Accord transmission - very clunky. I do recall finding the transmission unacceptable in performance and smoothness. I drove it for two weeks/several hundred miles. My company once rented me a 4cyl ATX Mystique for a business trip. They had to put a new unit in for that as well. The only thing left to do was drop a new transmission into the car. Changed some parts, ran some tests and the light still came on inside the car. A month or so later, the 'check engine' light came on and the transmission clunking occurred intermittently. When I returned to get my car they said that the pressure topped the charts and the oil pump and other parts had to be replaced. Skeptically they said they would look at it. I took the car to my nearest Ford dealer and the service guys looked at me like I did not know what I was talking about (I had a copy of the page from the manual).
#Ford ontour ailgnment manual#
He looked it up in the manual and it said something about the oil pressure. A lube man looked at the filter and it seemed enlarged. The next problem I had was with the oil pump. It does not have the icy edge that it should. The car has been in the shop three times for this. The first problem I had was with the air conditioning. I purchased a 98 Contour SE in May of 97.