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yup

It sounds like those things move pretty good. 0-60 in 5.8 seconds would be a lot of fun. It's surprising considering the 4900lb curb weight. Geeze Ford, swap out that steel for aluminum. That flex needs a diet. :)

This is what I have been up to on my Jag XF. The damn dash adhesive is known to let go so I had to remove the entire dash, strip the leather off and then drop it off at an upholstery shop. The dealer wants $7,000 to fix this for owners and it happens on almost all of the XF's. No thanks Jaguar, I'll pay $120 at a upholstery shop and fix it myself.... lol. I get it back tomorrow so I'm hoping the upholstery shop doesn't mess it up. I took a picture of every bolt/connector as I removed it so install shouldn't be a problem.


Looks kind of scary at the moment:

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See the slight lifting in the picture below:

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It sounds like those things move pretty good. 0-60 in 5.8 seconds would be a lot of fun. It's surprising considering the 4900lb curb weight. Geeze Ford, swap out that steel for aluminum. That flex needs a diet. :)
It does scoot pretty good for a 6 seat station wagon. :cool: Wouldn't hurt to lose a couple hundred pounds, of course you gotta have all the luxuries like heated/cooled seats, navigation, panoramic roof, tow package, etc that are adding weight!

$7k repair for what? To reglue the leather down? :troutslap: That doesn't look too scary with the dash removal. I remember how bad my SVT looked with no dash, that was ugly! I dig that leather color you have :drool:
 
Jaguar replaces the entire dash with a new one for some stupid reason. A new dash is still only about $2,500 though. That means they charge about $1125/hour if it takes about 2 hours to remove and 2 hours to install.
 
I got my Jag dash back and I installed it the other day. Here are pics before I installed it.

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It turned out pretty good. A few small wavy areas but I think it may shrink up in the sun anyway. The staples should help keep it in place. The updated dash that Jag sells now has staples just like this along the edges.

I drove the car after it was installed and it seemed like everything worked but I had a check engine light pop that I need to diagnose. I'm pretty sure all the connectors are connected so I think it's going to be unrelated.
 
I had it done at A & T Upholstery over in Maple Grove. The check engine light was a phantom light that went away after cleared. It was a cold idle light. I have a tiny coolant leak around the thermostat housing so it might be related to that even though it hasn't came back on. The O-ring is known for going bad so I'll have to get one of those on order. It's so nice to get back into the Jag after driving the Cougar all winter. It sucks getting the kids in and out of the Cougar's backseat.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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We went the same route 3 years ago, never looking back!

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Aside from maintaining my current vehicles, I've been feeding my new addiction.
 

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We went the same route 3 years ago, never looking back!
They are definitely nice vehicles! We have had ours since February, I actually came across one of your brake how-to's on fordflex.net haha. Haven't done any work on it yet other than replace a cabin air filter. Ours is a 13' with ecoboost and tow package. I towed our 17' fishing boat with it and it actually wasn't bad. I am planning on changing the fluid in the PTU, transmission, and rear diff one of these days.
 
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.
My Contour is also gone and I got rid of almost every part related to it. I still have the pilot bushing from the 3L, I almost tossed it in with the scrap but kept it on bench in the garage an SVT relic.
 
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You guys have a lot more stylish campers than my setup. :) I stay in my little 6.5x12' fishhouse (that I finished a few years ago). I park it up at a resort during the summer time. It's got a 22" tv and air conditioning though, so not completely roughing it :cool:

I scored a nice condition battery tray over the weekend at u pull. I sanded down some of the surface blemishes and hit it with some silver frost yesterday. Going to put that in and wire up the new battery this week.
 

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Wow the forum change is kind of confusing. That's a sweet camper/icehouse Tony!
You should see the inside :)

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That battery tray looks pretty nice. :)
Yeah it looks really nice, but you can't see it now that I mounted it and put the battery and fuse box back in place! :laugh:

Oh well, I know it looks good under there and that is what counts. :crazy:

I'm almost finished with this little project. I ended up replacing the main power wire going to the starter and trimming down the harness for the HIDs. I also replaced the grounds going from the battery to the tranny, roll resistor to body, and body to battery. The 2AWG 'welding cable' I bought from Amazon is extremely flexible and nice to work with compared to the stock wiring I took out that was stiff as could be. Not to mention the casing on the stock stuff was melted in several spots, I'm pretty confident the car is going to start better now. I used to occasionally get a random pause in the starter like it wasn't getting enough juice. Between the weak 10 year old battery and the cables falling apart at every ghetto connection it HAS to get better now! :cool:
 
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Looks pretty stock again. Doesnt look overly special when it's all assembled and hidden but I am happy about it. :laugh:

The only part that sucked is that to re-use the bracket that attaches to the starter you have to pretty much re-use the terminal ends that the stock cable had (because they're so long). I was able to clamp the old one down in the vice, bend the tabs out and clean out all the old wiring. If you ever looked at one you would know what I'm referring to, but basically I uncrimped it off the 4 gauge and re-crimped it as best I could with the new 2 gauge.

Also had a stud on the starter solenoid strip out (my guess it was already pretty much stripped from previous removals because it's just a copper stud it's not overly tough) I was able to get a die on it though and thread on a smaller nut and that tightened up fine.
 

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