Garage Cabinets, Garage Storage, and Garage Organization

I was wondering if anyone has had any experiences with the ford contour and replacement of the timing belt. I've heard mixed suggestions on when it should be changed. The ford factory manual suggests 60k miles, but I've heard many say that 50k is the time to do it. I understand that this may vary depending on how hard you are driving the car. In my case, my ford has 52k miles on it and I've never driven it hard. Any suggestions or advice on when it should be done??

My general opinion is that ford would recommend the change long before its determined lifespan and so the book replacement is probably a good guideline. Of course there is always the chance it may fail early but I believe that is the exception rather than the rule. Remember that experiences noted in any forum are a very small sample of the overall population and problems highlighted here tend to carry alot more emphasis.
If it is worrying you then perhaps for your own peace of mind when driving the car, it would be a good idea to change it earlier rather than later but consider a compromise around 50K to 55K as you did.

Here is my experience with my contour. I was thinking I should look into having the belt replaced (at aroung 100K kms) but was putting it off. Got back from a business trip and my brother told me that the car was making a funny noise. I turned it over and immediately knew something was very wrong. Without thinking I drove it at a crawl ovet to my local mechanic. He immediately identified the problem, broken tensioner. Luckily the belt had not skipped out of position and the engine was undamaged. Don't wait. Get it done.