When looking for a cheap, small car, I decided that, for the money, I could find an engine for the Cougar for much less than buying a working car. You might ask why the Cougar needed an engine after this repair. Well, the brand new timing chain tensioner that I installed failed. That allowed the chain to slap on start-up and the plastic chain guide broke and got ground up into the oil pan. That clogged the oil pickup screen and starved the engine of oil. I did failure analysis for fun. Ok I was trying to see if the engine could be saved. I fixed it and it worked fine for a few miles until it developed a rod knock.
So when I saw a 1998 Contour for sale, I knew I found an engine for the Cougar. I could have replaced the power steering rack on the Contour and drove it, but then how exciting is a four door automatic when I could have a five speed coupe?
I was going to help my son do the engine swap so he could drive the Cougar, but he was borrowing my Thunderbird to get to work and he decided it would be easier to just buy my T-bird from me than do the engine swap. Deal. I'll swap the Cougar engine and drive it. Looking back, I think he might have done the smarter deal. But mine will be more fun . . . after a lot of hard work.
I figured it shouldn't be too hard to swap an engine. I was thinking it would only take one day to remove the Cougar engine, one day to remove the Contour engine, one day to swap, and one day to put it back together. Just unhook stuff, unbolt stuff, use the engine crane and within a few days, there you go! I wish it was that easy. I seem to always underestimate the time it takes me to do these projects. Here's how long it actually took with life happening between Saturdays and evenings working on the car.
September 21
I was excited to start this project. I made good progress unhooking stuff.
September 22
Still highly motivated and making good progress. I dropped the engine out the bottom. (I lowered it with my shop crane.)
Projects like this take less time in my head than in reality. I never account for things like broken bolts, broken drill bits, and needed replacement parts.
September 26
Raise the car higher and slide the engine out the side. This should have been done on day two, but it's ok. I'm not too far behind schedule. It's still warm enough outside.
And pull the engine off the transmission.
October 1
Take pictures of the donor engine before unhooking everything.
October 9
Drop the engine out of the Contour. Where did the time go? I was supposed to be done with this project in no more than three Saturdays with working on it some weekday evenings.
October 13
The sub-frame bolts kept turning the nuts because of the rust. There was a metal grate and sound absorber over the nuts, but it wasn't removable without cutting through it. So I had to cut through the floor to access the nuts and hold them with vice grips.
Pulled the Contour's engine out the side.
October 14
Pull the Contour's engine off the transmission.
In addition to just swapping the engine, there were things that needed attention.
- Replace the crankshaft oil seals, front and rear.
- Replace passenger side CV output shaft seal.
- Replace the clutch disk.
- Swap power steering pumps. (The Contour's PS pump ran dry for who knows how long.)
Pre-Task Plan
Re-assembly is where you don't want to forget anything like a rear crank seal, so I decided to make a list of things to do, in order, to get the engine in. I didn't expect the list to be this long.
- Replace rear crankshaft seal.
- Install new clutch disk.
- Tighten axle mount bolts on rear of engine.
- Install Bottom Engine Mount bolts
- Install starter
- Replace P/S pump
- Replace front crankshaft seal
- Clean CV splines and reinstall CV shaft
- Re-install engine wiring harness
- Fix speed sensor wire (it broke)
- Work exhaust manifold bolts in case cats need replacing
- Slide engine under car
- Tie up all loose connections on engine before lifting
- Lift engine
- Install four chassis bolts
- Bolt in top Engine mounts
- Connect computer harness & ground wires
- Connect power steering reservoir supply & return hoses
- Engine mount ground cable
- Bolt in struts
- Install fender shrouds
- CV axle nuts, Brakes, strut, sway bar links
- Connect steering linkage
- Shifter cables
- Clutch hose
- Brake hoses
- Connect evap vacuum hose 1/8"
- Connect evap hose 3/8"
- Climate control vacuum hose
- Brake booster vacuum hose
- Connect fuel supply & return
- Connect wiring harness on driver side
- Accelerator & cruise cables
- Battery ground cable
- Install radiator/fan assembly
- Radiator hose assembly
- Fan wire & other wire (Yeah, I don't know what it connects to at the moment.)
- Connect heater hoses
- Connect the three coolant reservoir hoses
- Install P/S cooler
- Mount temperature sensor
- P/S fluid
- Air filter box
- Air filter & hose, connect MAF sensor, PCV hose
- Install O2 sensor to replace the one I broke.
- Re-install exhaust heat shield
- Body ground cables
- Install battery (and then take it out again because it was in the way)
- Engine oil & filter
- Mount exhaust
- Re-connect fender rods
- Bleed clutch
- Grease ball joints
- Replace sway bar links
- Replace brake calipers
- Bleed brakes
- Wheels & torque lug nuts
- Top off transmission oil
- Install new AC accumulator
- Evacuate and re-charge the AC. (Need to add another 0.2kg R-134A because it only took 0.55 kg and won't run when it's this cold)
- Install new windshield wipers
- Install air dam deflector
- Get new tires
- Install DVR dashcam
- Fix brake sensor wires
- Replace idler pulley
- Flush heater core
October 17
Removing the rear crankshaft seal works better using a screw than using the actual seal puller tool. There's less risk of damaging the crankshaft sealing surface with the screw method than with the seal puller. I drilled into the metal part of the seal and used a claw hammer to pry off the old seal. You can see the seal puller in the top part of this photo. It doesn't work. It's pretty useless.
It looks like there's only one way the flywheel can go on to make all the holes line up. I like that. It mistake-proofs the assembly. The Japanese call that poka yoke.
I found that it would have been easier to connect the engine and transmission if I had two engine hoists. Instead, we had the engine on the hoist and two-person-lifted the transmission to connect it to the engine. It was still way easier than trying to mate the two with the engine in the car.
Ouch!
When I was trying to pull the CV shaft out of the wheel knuckle, as soon as I got it clear, I smashed my finger tip between the CV shaft and the brake caliper. That stinkin' hurt. I was doing my best not to say bad words. "Sheesh, farmin' dog meat! That hurt!" I felt through the glove for any broken bones. No blood. Seems ok. It'll probably leave another mark on my fingernail that'll show up in a week. Amazingly, no mark. But there was a mark on that same fingernail from an injury a week or so earlier that I can't remember.
"Dog meat" is my curse word. My son questioned that phrase when we were working on a car together. Something happened and that's what came out of my mouth.
November 3, 4, 7
Installing the engine, transmission, sub-frame assembly. It doesn't look like it, but there was enough room to slide the engine in from the side under the fender. From there I used the shop crane to lift it into place.
November 11
I was about to connect the throttle cable when I realized it didn't match up. Had to swap the throttle assembly & clean the EGR passages while I was in there. Don't want all that carbon build-up to trigger the check engine light. Been there done that. I got the insufficient EGR flow trouble code before on the old engine.
November 14, 17
Install radiator etc.
November 21
Back when I tried to unbolt the exhaust on the Contour, three studs on the
exhaust pipe broke off. So I was trying to drill out the broken studs when a drill bit broke and sprung back and hit me hard enough to draw blood (injury number two on this project).
November 28
Replaced engine oil & filter.
So I went to unbolt the exhaust pipe and broke two more studs because they were seized. I had some cheap drill bits and spent a good part of another day trying to drill them out. Finally I went to the hardware store and got a couple good drill bits. I don't know why I didn't do that in the first place. It would have saved so much time.
December 5
Install new sway bar links. Install new rear catalytic converter. Here's how I found the old cat was bad. The honeycomb structure was deformed from intense heat due to a misfire. Here's what it looked like on the inlet side. When I saw this, I wasn't going to put it back on. Maybe that's why the old engine was so weak.
Here's what the new catalytic converter looked like.
December 14
Which Brake Size Do I Have?
I tried to open the bleeder valve and broke it off because it was seized. Then I tried to open the bleeder valve on the other caliper. It also broke off. So I decided I would order new calipers instead of rebuilding these. The parts listings showed two different sizes of rotors: 260 mm or 278 mm. So I measured my rotors and they were 260 mm. I ordered the calipers for 260 mm rotors. So far, so good, right?
When the calipers arrived, I removed the old ones only to find that someone put the smaller rotors on when it should have had the larger rotors. Thanks to that mistake (not mine!), now I have all the hardware for the 260 mm brakes instead of the 278 mm brakes.
I'll have to order new 278 mm rotors and swap the caliper mounting brackets to go back to the original brake size. But not today.
December 15
Trip to the DMV to get temporary tags.
December 19
Air up the tires. Replace wiper blades. Air Conditioner - replace the accumulator, evacuate and recharge it.
December 21
Got a set of new tires at Discount Tire. Still no check engine light, so before taking it to get emissions tested, I'll use my OBD-II scanner to make sure it's ready.
How Long Did it Take?
That project took about 13 weeks - at least eight Saturdays and twelve weekday evenings.
This is why old cars like this go to the junk yard instead of getting new engines. Sixty hours of labor at $60/hour would be $3600 in labor costs. Blue book value on this car isn't even $1000. So why did I even do this? I'm cheap and didn't want to spend that kind of money on another car right now. Besides, work is good for the soul and builds character.
Oh yeah, and I had to prove that I could finish a difficult project because there's a Talon transmission that's been in my garage for seven years, still not finished.
Differences
This information is just for anyone else interested in this kind of engine swap. Here are some things that were different on the Contour compared to the Cougar engine:
- Throttle linkage / throttle assembly
- Coolant temperature sensor
- Rear catalytic converter
- Exhaust pipe between all three catalytic converters
- The aluminum plate between the engine and transmission has an access hole in the automatic transmission version, but not in the manual version.
- The manual trans uses a different bolt hole in the engine oil pan than the automatic, but there are two holes in the engine oil pan on that side, so the oil pan works for both auto and manual transmissions.
