Motor mounts kicked my ass

[rmconner80]

This Sunday I spent around 7 hours doing motor mounts. Just jacking up this car takes 30 minutes since you have to do two on a side and sweat and hem and haw over whether it's going to slip off and dent your undercarriage all to hell when you jack the other side (which I've done twice before )

We've done the clutch, belts, water pump, and other stuff. I'm still waiting for the "easy" job. Everything is frickin EXTRA HARD to do on this car.

Anyhoo, sorry for the rant. The mounts were terribly difficult to get out (and worse to put the new ones in). We had to completely remove the cross member on each side (one at a time) while also loosening the caster block mount (those notorious 34 ft lb ones that everybody strips), while simultaneously prying with all my might using a 1 inch thick 3.5 foot crowbar to move the cross member down enough to get the damn mounts in and out.

Clark's Garage has been nearly useless on a lot of these jobs. It basically gives no explanation for anything and paralyzes our ability to think critically because we're trying to follow the steps / directions. I still don't know what the reasoning is behind "scribing around the cross member bolts". Following the directions, we needed another TWO INCHES to get the mounts out. Every time we do a job, we end up doing it quite significantly different from Clark's in order to complete it. There are good tips, sure, but if we followed all the steps... we'd never have finished any of these jobs. I think that is weird.

I used Meyle but they didn't seem to have a P on them, or any discernible mark that had been ground off. I'm really REALLY hoping these aren't the cheap mounts and that they last because I don't think I can convince my dad to help me do this next time

I love owning the car, I love putting things right on it, but the actual work can be SO much harder than I expect.

[Slam]

I feel your pain. Best way to do these is to support the engine from above and drop the crossmember completely - take it right out. Scribing around the mount is so you can ballpark the alignment when you're done.

[hpservertech]

I've done motor mounts twice, and both times I have followed Clarks and have never had a problem. First time I did it only took 5 hours, and most of that was cleaning things as I went. Only takes about 5 minutes on each side to raise the car.

But then again, I've never had my car fall off the jacks either or slip on me when raising/lowering it.

In the future, post this in the technical forum instead of the classifieds section.