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Change your cabin air filter!!!

xtascox said:
Lol, but I have more chunks of crap!!! :laugh:



Wow, we're arguing over who's cabin filter is the filthiest and most disease causing:crazy:
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:laugh:

Bob and I had discussed this topic at some point, but it fell through the mental cracks. It's now on the car to-do list and under active discussion. I have no clue whether it's ever been changed on the Contour we have now (purchased 3 weeks ago with 136k miles). I do know the regular air filter (the easy one to access, that handles air coming into the engine) looked new.
 
when I changed mine a few weeks ago i got mine back in 07. my cabin filter was as dirty as can be, u could not find a white part on the filter. and I have not changed it since then yet, but I plan to in the spring/summer of 2010, to see what it looks like

and I'm sure not alot of dealers, or other automotive places know of a cabin filter in 95 when the mystique/contour was 1st made.
 
Probably a not-too-bright question here (my husband is the car person in the family): would the cabin air filter have any bearing on humidity of the air coming through the ventilation system when the car is switched on? I'd parked briefly today (had been using AC, did not turn it off when I parked and turned off the engine), and when I started the car again, the air coming at me was quite humid for a brief period.
 
Seanette said:
Probably a not-too-bright question here (my husband is the car person in the family): would the cabin air filter have any bearing on humidity of the air coming through the ventilation system when the car is switched on? I'd parked briefly today (had been using AC, did not turn it off when I parked and turned off the engine), and when I started the car again, the air coming at me was quite humid for a brief period.
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Possibly if the area around the filter is not sealed properly it could get slightly wet. The seal to my cougar's filter was leaking where it meets the windshield which resulted in a soaked filter and no air circulation. This only happened if my car was sitting in a down pour for a good amount of time but it took a few days to dry out :/
 
Hasn't rained much here lately. We're planning to check that today, anyway (big items on our agenda include windshield polishing).
 
Update: we did check the filter. It's not as gruesome as some posted here, but does need to be replaced. We also got the cruise control working!
 
As Seanette reported, we did check our cabin air filter today, and it wasn't nearly as nasty-looking as some of the other examples that have been posted here. We probably will attempt, at some time in the near future, to acquire and install a replacement. I'm surprised at how big a deal it was to get at this filter. The owner's manual includes instructions, but they seem inadequate. For example, the manual described some retaining clips that needed to be released in order to remove the wiper arms. No, there were no such clips; I had to use a wrench to unscrew a large nut on each arm. The manual didn't say anything about these nuts, or any need for a wrench.

Here's how our filter looked when we had it out.

CabinAirFilter.jpg


And here is some of the dust I shook out of it, as seen through my microscope using the 10× objective and the 5× eyepiece. This entire image covers a square that is two millimeters on a side, with each pixel being about 2.5 micrometers.

CabinAirFilterDust.jpg

I've put some of this in a petri dish, to see if I can culture anything out of it.


Concerning the cruise control—at some point, while I had the hood open, Seanette mentioned that when she had the alarm installed in this car, the alarm installer had made note that the cruise control was inoperative. I wondered how the alarm installer knew this, without having had the chance to drive the car at sufficient distances or speeds to try to use it. This did serve as a clue, however. I figured, just look at anything the alarm installer might have noticed, and see if I could find an obvious problem. Sure enough, I discovered that the throttle linkage was disconnected at the throttle. I reconnected that, and now our cruise control works.
 
Always nice to be married to someone this brilliant. Now if he could be this brilliant about not shredding my last nerve.... ;)

Does anyone have suggestions about where to least expensively find the replacement cabin air filter? We live in Sacramento, CA, and have no problem with mail-ordering.
 
Cabin Air Filter Causing Leak

Cabin Air Filter Causing Leak

My 95 LX leaks into the passenger footwell if the car is parked on a slant to the right on the street. I take it that is the side the air filter is located on. Could it be causing this leak into the car?
 
Why is this thread in the “Duratec Maintenance” subforum?

Why is this thread in the “Duratec Maintenance” subforum?

Seems like this thread ought to be in a more general maintenance-oriented subforum, not in one that is specific to the Duratec engine.
 
harrup said:
My 95 LX leaks into the passenger footwell if the car is parked on a slant to the right on the street. I take it that is the side the air filter is located on. Could it be causing this leak into the car?
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in a word YES
Seanette said:
At least on our '97 Contour, it's pretty much centered.
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more on the passenger side;)
Bob Blaylock said:
Seems like this thread ought to be in a more general maintenance-oriented subforum, not in one that is specific to the Duratec engine.
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I've always thought that also:shrug::confused::help::wtf:
 
Here are some bacteria cultured from the dust from my cabin air filter. I've applied the Gram stain process to them, and the purple color indicates that they are Gram-positive.

60× objective, 15× eyepiece; each numbered tick on the scale is 20 µM.

20091129_004035_BacteriaFromContourCabinAirFilter.jpg

There is also some mold growing in this same petri dish, also rather obviously from the air filter dust.
 
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Not sure how worried I should be about Gram-positive stuff, but I'd say the mold is a strong argument in favor of getting that filter changed ASAP, especially since we just bought a new one.
 
Seanette said:
Not sure how worried I should be about Gram-positive stuff, but I'd say the mold is a strong argument in favor of getting that filter changed ASAP, especially since we just bought a new one.
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Contour MRSA, run away quickly :dizzy: :laugh:
This reminds me I gotta do this soon, I bought a filter during the summer and never did it. :nonono:
-J
 
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