97 conti owners

[fosterchild]

wow, im really glad i stumbled onto this website. I recently was given a 97 continental as a bribe from my parents to get em to move back to their side of the country, haha, and man is the car ever fun to drive. Nothing feels better then smoking some cocky little 16 year old and his shit box cav/civ/sunfire. But now i've got some extra cash lying around and i've already done everything i wanted to do to its sound system so what do you think i should buy to get the most bang for my buck in regards to horsepower gain.... IM looking to drop maybe a grand not a whole lot more right now.... Car and engine are still in great shape although it does have about 100,000kms on it

[fosterchild]

oh and one other small thing, it keeps saying there is a door ajar, it neither the drivers or passenger side door and all other doors are firmly shut, fairly confindent the rear right door is the culprit, anyone else experience this prblem or know how to fix it?

[Steve Moran]

Hi fosterchild, welcome to Lincolns Online.
All you need to do is spray a liberal amount of WD40 in the latch, the door ajar switch is inside and it gets sticky after a while with all the crud build up.
After you free it up and the WD40 dries up then a good healthy dose of spray white grease will help lubricate it for a long time to come.

[fosterchild]

thanks for the quick reply i'll get on that quick, thought it might have been something electrical and a lot more work, haha. if anyone still has any ideas on the horsepower question, im still open to suggestions

[TheSweetRossLg]

i use the wd40 but after give it some silcone spray or somthing like that

[ContiDave]

Welcome--you have come to the right place. As to the mods, I would do the cabin filter in the tech section and maybe put on a performance exhaust. However, I would hesitate to put too many horses on that transmission.

[v8_dave]

Welcome--you have come to the right place. As to the mods, I would do the cabin filter in the tech section and maybe put on a performance exhaust. However, I would hesitate to put too many horses on that transmission.

Welcome!

I concour about the trans. The engine was actually downtuned to work with that trans in this car. Now if you have the money set aside to replace it with maybe a Jasper trans in the near future, we can talk HP.

You can get a custom tune, custom air box/intake, true dual exhaust an get it up over 300 ponies. Theres more as well, but even if you do those yourself its gotta run a grand.

[pro-five-oh]

I'd open up the airbox (tech article), get a chip (SCT or Superchips are the most common) and get an external transmission cooler. Any money left over can be used to make a cat-back exhaust with your choice of mufflers (I recommend Magnaflow Street muffler 2.25" with the polished body and tip)...

The tranny is a weak point, so the harder you drive it, the sooner its gonna take a dump. Change its oil/filter frequently and think about that external cooler.

Welcome aboard. :)

[TheSweetRossLg]

um from what im hearing here i think where also leaving out a shift kits this ax4n is the worst trany i think they could have put in this contie should have made rroom for somthing a little stronger

but id definetly get a shift kits put in that will help save the life of the tranny

[ekooke]

Check the TECH articles for ways to fix many problems. For example;
FIX THE DOOR AJAR MESSAGE: http://www.lincolnsonline.com/tech/00089.html