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P0303 and P0171, Engine Vibrations

delkra said:
And to those who disliked the Tempo, go ahead and laugh, but I got a TON of mileage out of thing and put almost nothing into it. I had no cash at the time so every "repair" I did involved duct tape and often had no right to work at all. But that car just kept going and going. I still buy Fords today because of that Tempo and this Contour.
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My Dad had an 86 or 87 (first generation) Tempo, it was an uninspiring POS, but it was very reliable and served him well until Alzheimer's started to rob him of his ability to navigate around the small Michigan town they lived in. I seem to remember that Mom took away the keys about 1999, he passed away in 2007. I used to call his Tempo the Elmer Fudd car.
 
Ford electrical connector identification. This is a very useful catalog to identify Ford wiring connectors, see if you can find the 12-cavity connector used in your Contour on page 34, if you can, you should be able to order a new pig-tailed connector. This catalog isn't all-inclusive, some really old or uncommon stuff has been phased out.
https://www.motorcraft.com/content/d...-Book-2016.pdf
 
gmorrell said:
My Dad had an 86 or 87 (first generation) Tempo, it was an uninspiring POS, but it was very reliable...
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It was indeed uninspiring. I still remember... I fixed a bunch of stupid problems on mine. I even duct-taped a plug wire which had touched the exhaust manifold somehow.. When I had a saved a few Bucks, I decided to make it less uninspiring. I put a great high flow air filter in it, replaced the plugs and replaced the plug wires with some bright yellow ones which were "guaranteed" to make more horsepower.

Guess what, it was still pretty uninspiring. But it just kept going, which at that point was all I really could afford.

That electrical identification book is great. I will see if I can find it, but ...

I was thinking about what aboythatskates was saying earlier. Do you think I could get away with cutting out the old connector and just soldering the wires? I was looking at it and even if I did do an engine swap, it may not be that big of a deal. Maybe they just used the connector so they could wire up the engine separately from the body on the assembly line.
 
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