A Needle in the Ford Taurus haystack

Ever had problems with your late 90s to early 2000s Ford Taurus?  If you are honest, then you will say "HELL YEAH I HAVE"!!!  Well good news! I have a few pointers that may save you money and ( more importantly) sanity.  But before I get into that, I must say that the first rule of car work is to find your zen.  A calm mind is an ordered mind and you will definitely need that calm ordered mind if you are working on a Ford Taurus.  The Ford Taurus fits into the S-factor:  the skin  factor.  I have taken it upon myself to come up with this classification myself so don't go Google it, you wont find it.  The S-factor is the amount of skin you will lose working on any particular car.  Mostly on your arms.  The Taurus has the dubious S-factor of 8 out of 10 over all.  Ouch.
You will need some music to listen to as you work on the Taurus.  Two genres come to mind:  Death Rock, and or Classical. Both seem to work just as well.

Problems

1.  Taurus revs when on the highway for no reason, some dash lights randomly come on (including the coolant and brake light) and the starter can randomly run with the engine on making a horrible grinding sound. 

Ok.  Here's the fix.  Change the Transmission Selector Switch, also called a Neutral Safety Switch.  It is located on top of the transmission and is not too difficult to fix.  This little bastard is the cause of many weird electrical problems on the Taurus and goes kablooey without warning and will leave you stranded eventually.

You will find it underneath the Air Filter box or in that general location.  The shift cable from the transmission is connected to the top of it so take it off first.  Trust me, this little devil is a Ford Taurus classic when it comes to weird electrical problems.  The cause of the problem is that the switch becomes full of water.  Yes thats right, water. I opened it up once and it smelled terrible so you have been warned.

2.  Ford Taurus has a birdlike chirp coming from the engine that never goes away no matter how many times you change the belt, and possibly a code indicating misfire. 

You are going to love this one.  And by love this one, I mean hate it.  Your culprit is not a squeaky belt but rather a squeaking camshaft synchronizer.  It is only found on the engines that ford declared Vulcan or single camshaft engines, not the dual overhead 3.0.   What in the name of the outer darkness is a camshaft synchronizer you say?  Its basically a distributor with its head cut off. Yup.  Madame Guillotine strikes again. In each Ford Taurus is a cam synchronizer that provides a timing pulse to time the injectors and spark plugs.
It has a metal bearing, probably bronze, that starts squeaking like a baby bird after a certain number of miles and eventually breaks.  If you are driving slow through a parking lot and people are grabbing their ears in pain or dogs are running away from you in your neighborhood, you need a new one.  It looks like this:

In order to replace it you must take everything away from the awful place Ford engineers put it at the bottom of the intake manifold valley. Pull everything away from area, including the wires connected to it, and make some marks to align the new one.  Thats it.  You are back on the road to inner peace and tranquility in no time. If it looks a little difficult, do a google search on replacing it and you will  find many good write ups on how to do the job.

3.  Ford Taurus spits out power steering fluid like a redneck chewing tobacco. 

Try to find some inner peace here, because you are going to need it.  I found out why, after a couple of years working on cars, mechanics swear.  Its a form of stress release from the stupid things that engineers invent and then shove on the public, which then end up in a shop where the lowly mechanic is expected to perform miracles.
The power steering rack has air in it somewhere.  When you turn on the car the  pump runs and the fluid level goes down because the air is being compressed by the pump.  When you turn off the car, that compressed air bubble in the power steering rack pushes the oil up and out of the pump.  Hard.  This causes the oil to squirt all over the top of the engine making a @#%#@## mess all over................calm, calm......
In order to get the air out you need to jack up both sides of the car so the front wheels are off the ground and start the car and turn the steering wheel back and forth all the way to each side about a million times.........or about 50.  Also only add enough fluid to keep the bottom of the pump covered while it is running.  Do not fill it half full or when you shut off the engine it will go everywhere.  When you have bled it a bunch of times, turn off the car and watch the fluid level.  Hopefully it will not puke out, but if it is at least half way full, leave it.  You are done.
And hopefully it wont look like this.