So my girlfriend's '05 Taurus was recently sideswiped and totaled while it was parked and unoccupied. Some of you may remember that I recently posted asking for recommendations as to a replacement car. I'm kicking around the idea of replacing her Taurus with...another Taurus.
As I said in my earlier post, she's not a gearhead nor can she drive a stick. The insurance company is lowballing us on replacement value (I'm currently slugging that out with them). She's decided that rather get into debt by financing something, she wants to spend ~$2k on something older but still reliable. She just spent $2k less than 3000 miles ago on rebuilding the trans in her Taurus.
My idea is to buy the wreck back for salvage value, ($675) pull the trans that has been recently rebuilt, pull the 3.0 Vulcan boat anchor and sell it for whatever I can get, then find a nice Taurus or Sable with a blown trans that I can buy for cheap. I'm hoping to find one with the DOHC 3.0 Duratec, which is pretty spunky from what I understand.
My questions on this:
1) Is the transmission the same between the Vulcan and Duratec cars? If it's not, what's different and how hard is it to change?
2) How difficult is pulling the trans on a Taurus? I've pulled the transmission on FWD transverse cars before. It's never fun, but I can think of worse jobs. Is this one easier or more difficult than average? Any tips or tricks to make it go smoother?
3) What are the reliability concerns with the Duratec? I plan on doing basic maintenance (t-belt/water pump/etc., etc.) while I'm in there. Are they basically reliable? Prone to failure after indifferent maintenance?
4) Is there a real-world fuel economy difference between the two? fueleconomy.gov says they're just about the same.
