Ever heard of the Ford Mondeo? It's kind of like the David Hasselhoff of cars; huge in Europe, but not so much here. I heard about the marvelous Mondeo on the BBC's Top Gear, which normally tests supercars, but waxed pretty poetic about "the car there's no reason not to own." At first, I was a little bitter that Europe got this most amazing of Ford sedans and we didn't. Until that is, I saw a picture of the Mondeo -- which looked suspiciously like the overheating Contour in my driveway.
Technically speaking, you can drain the Mondeo -- um, Contour's -- radiator through the petcock valve on the bottom. But mine was stuck, so I pulled the lower radiator hose instead. Normally, I'd have just followed the upper radiator hose to the thermostat housing, but it was hard to see under the resonator box on top of the engine. I removed the screws that held the black, plastic box to the top of the engine.
With the resonator off, the thermostat was visible on top of the engine. To get to the three bolts easier, I pulled the coolant overflow tank hose off the top of the housing. With the bolts removed, the housing pulled off and the thermostat came out. I checked the O-ring wrapped around the thermostat to make sure it wasn't hard, cracked or damaged, and carefully pulled it off the thermostat. I installed it on the new thermostat, squeezing it down around the edges to make sure it was seated. I plugged it into the engine in the same orientation that it came out, and hand-threaded the housing bolts in. The bolts took 6 to 8 foot-pounds of torque, but I used the high side torque spec as a matter of principle. Double-checking to make sure they were all tightened evenly, I plugged the overflow tank hose in, refilled the system and checked checked it for leaks after bleeding the air out.
