ya i know will see what happens

Your contour can be a very capable track car with the SVT sway bars or the thicker ones BAT has. A set of coilovers, or BATs Euro-handling kit will lower it and make it flatter in corners. The SVT contour was designed as a track car, not a quarter mile car. Add front and rear strut tower bars, a big brake kit, and they do VERY well on the track.

Sorry, I responded to you while I was at school waiting for classes to begin. The engine measures approx 24" above the subframe, 33 inches deep (that is where you are going to have the problem in the contour engine bay, you could fabricate headers and save an inch or two, but dont get to excited. The engine is 31" wide from the center of the motor mount to the edge of the exhaust crossover. Once again you can save yourself a couple inches if you fab up exhaust and headers, and run them underneath the car, but using the 3800, you wouldnt have the room to run exhaust underneath.

Sure the engine looks like it might fit when you glance at it, but, once you add all those novelties like exhaust, heads, an intake manifold, motor mounts, there is no chance it will fit without serious modification to the engine bay and a custom subframe, and then you would still be lucky to get it in there. Even after that, you still have all the pain in the butt of swapping wire harnesses and ECUs, the mystique instrument cluster wont work, so you would need to buy gauges and figure out how to wire them in. Then, the only good reason to put a 3800 and a 4t60/4t65 in your car would be to build a quarter mile car, and if you were going through all that trouble, why not just fab up motor mounts, a tunnel and a rear subframe so you can do a RWD conversion?

But in the end, you will just have a 98 mystique. Wait till you can afford an SVT if you want a fast contour.

And, I know this sounds strange to a young guy like you with lots of dreams, but there is a reason why everyone on the contour forums are telling you that it is a DUMB idea. Believe it or not, a lot of us have the mechanical ability to do something like this, much more I assume than you do given your age and the kind of questions you ask.

sorry typo. But just out of curiosity, what is the bellhousing pattern for the 4.3? There is a 4wd blazer with a blown engine and a lot of body damage, so I was thinking of pulling the transmission for my diesel conversion on my explorer.

good point FIND. yes im a young guy with big ideas i dont know everything i know that but i know quite a bit about cars i went to school for auto body learn alot there and hanging out with my friend thats goign to otc for high performance ive alot learned alot from him

I think Hetfield said it best on your other thread.

Just don't make too big a deal about it. Eventually you will get over it and may move on to some better stuff, or you may enjoy the platform and start doing the things you can actually do. Honestly, most of the people who come in with those claims, eventually get a different car and stop posting one day when they move on to their next big thing.

Believe me, on every platform, there are always newbies that come on, usually people right around your age, they have these big ideas, and are certain they have tons of skills, but they usually realize money and reality are too big of obstacles for them to overcome.

It would be a LOT more believable if you owned a nicer car, but, lets be honest, most people who get their first contique and ended up buying some 4 cylinder car, generally bought it because it is the nicest thing they can afford, and knowing what those cars go for, it isn't real likely you have the financial ability to pursue your ambitions.

Plus, you have a LOT of projects going on right now. I'll give you a piece of advice, focus on one project, the only other things you should have are reliable vehicles that arent going to distract you from the work you need to do on your project. People make this mistake all the time, and while I don't mind as much, mostly because that means there are incomplete projects out there that people are willing to get rid of for next to nothing just because they are frustrated, I am just trying to give you a warning.

This is the biggest reason I am not active in escort groups anymore. Most people on there are people with HUGE dreams that don't know the first thing about what they are doing, and most of them only have an escort because they cannot afford anything else. There are VERY few people who buy a cheap crappy car because they like them. I personally just buy the things I liked when I was young. It'* like that EGT I have, I've owned 14 escorts so far, and this probably wont be my last one.

Well said Find.