Thought I would stick my nose in here and sniff around a little bit. Contour is long gone, but Im finding Contour/Mystique parts around the garage that keep pulling me in.
Nice thread bump
I too have a nice stash of parts I keep coming across in the roof of the garage. Trying to throw away Cougar parts as I come across them (and ask myself why I kept them in the first place).
I actually worked on my Contour a bit last night. Trying to tidy up some stuff in the engine bay and re-doing all my battery cables this year. Over the years I've had so many things that made me tweak something with the wiring/battery that it's become an ugly mess.
I'm pretty sure my Optima yellow top is over 10 years old now, replacing that as it's getting weak
Used to have this GMK Cold air Intake that required cutting the battery tray and moving the fuse block, since that is long gone I have a hacked up battery tray and loose fuse block laying there. Going to try and find another battery tray at u-pull and get that all sorted out. Since I take the battery in and out every year the battery hold down bars never stay upright because those plastic clips are busted as well.
Several years ago (after the first 3L swap I think, so 2005ish?) I fried one of my original battery cables because it rubbed on the EGR tube and melted through the casing grounding it out. I replaced that cable between the mega-fuse and the starter and that actually is pretty cleanly fixed. I used two battery cables for the positives at that point. New top post cable going to the fuse box and new side post cable to the starter. Two "universal" terminals w/cables results in a pretty ugly setup, so I'm ditching that for a cleaner look.
More recently (probably only 3-4 years ago) I added the HID headlights, which added a separate harness to supply power to the ballasts directly from the battery instead of using the stock wiring. I had stuffed the harness up under the battery tray and ziptied it out of the way but it was pretty tacky really. I might try and shorten it up some to get rid of all the extra wiring and then see if I can mount the relay a little better and even more hidden. Looking for more of an OEM look.
Actually kind of a fun project so far, bought new terminals from Knukonceptz and some red and black 2AWG welding cable off Amazon for the new cables. Not sure if I will go all the way to the alternator or not to make it a full "Big 3" upgrade, but I at least plan on replacing a couple of the grounds going to the engine. This is all probably overkill even with 2AWG since I don't have a sound system anymore.
I don't really enjoy working on cars like some people do. Seems like the smallest jobs can become super annoying and take a car out of commission, I'm sure that's largely due to me owning/working on old rust belt cars where any given rusty bolt can become a several hour ordeal cutting/drilling to get them out. I do however love the sense of accomplishment when a job is finished and something can be considered FIXED.
