97 Sable w/ 3L Duratec - Engine problems
 

[align=left]Hey! This is my second post, right after the intro. I would like to know if you can help me out with a bunch of problems I'm having with the 97 Sable in my signature. First, though, here are pictures of some work my friend (pictured) and I (not pictured) did on the car a few months ago.

I polished the wheels with some rags and Armor All.
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Then, we took off the intake manifold to do a spark plug, plug wire, and coil pack change as a tune-up.
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I think this throttle body is really small. No offense or anything, of course.
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Here's more of the process of detaching everything for the IM to come off:
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Look at how burned up the plugs are!
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One plug had almost come apart!
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Here we are cleaning the intake ports:
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Here's my friend James letting all the cleaning fluids drip out the intake manifold:
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Here are some more engine pictures:
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So, what do you think? I believe the engine bay is fairly clean. Look at the pulleys! Even they are very well taken care of:
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This is a nice car that has not been thrashed. It was a daily driver for my mom, and now it's down. The transmission started slipping, so we replaced it. The new one works really well, but it's too bad. The engine has been having vacuum leaks, oil leaks, bad sensors, etc. We paid $1200 for both the transmisison swap and an engine overhaul to make the car run better than before. When we got it back, it was worse off. In fact, it was so bad that the car barely ran without at least 10% throttle at all times, and even then it would stall from time to time.

We had a dealer check out the car, and they told us, like everyone else, that the O2 sensor was bad. We had replaced it twice over 1 1/2 years, and that didn't seem likely. When the dealer checked the car again, we were told then that the entire O2 sensor circuitry is bad. That's farily disgusting. Here's what we did to the car:
Oil change
Transmisson change
New plugs, plug wires, ignition coils
New MAF sensor
New O2 sensor
New idle air control sensor
Recharged K&N filter
Cleaned the intake manifold ports
Cleaned the throttle body

There's some box on the front cam cover that has a little electric motor that controls a bike brake-type wire to open/close one of two valves per cylinder for the intake air. I believe this is for performance and emissions. The cable on the car had completely broken apart, so my friend and I replaced the entire box setup. However, the plate onto which the wire attaches lost its little gasket-type thing that holds the wire in place. Now, whenever that brand new motor runs, it opens nothing.

However, aside from the engine and transmission, everything else about the car has been fairly solid. We've been maintaining most of the bushings and things of that nature, and the interior is almost like new, though the car has 140K miles. Every electronic thing works, so that's great. The only problem is that the DS rear window sometimes won't open/close, but I don't want to mess with that right now. So, how do I get this car up and running again? I'm open to all recommendations. Thanks a lot!
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