rear engine mounts

[smallspeed]

in the spirit of recent conversations about bushes, has anyone replaced the rear engine mounts on their car with the RS or other uprated items? mine are not gone, but are old and i think while its off the road i might take the oportunity to replace them..

any views on the RS bushes and the difference between them and the standard ones? I believe they're a straight swap..

Im not too bothered about a bit more NVH, but im thinking it might be of benefit to the engine, and also lay the ground work for a little more power if i went for a cup pipe, re-map, etc. a bit further down the line...

ben

 

[964rh]

Hi Ben

I was looking at replacing the standard mounts to RS spec when the car was laid up.
From what I've read on others forums, unless you replace every mount ie gearbox as well and possible a reinforced motor mount it may not be worth doing as the RS mounts may cause more movement in other area's.
I think what I trying to say is that if you only replace the engine mounts it could stress the older, normal parts more.
Cause, if you replace all mounts then it should be all good.

Rob

sorry for the codsh1t above, it's been a long day and I'm at work for another 8 hours!

 

[smallspeed]

ha-ha!.. sounds like the 15hr day I had yesterday!..

makes perfect sense. Im thinking as the rear ones are old (although seem to be alright) I might wait until the autumn when I have a proper size garage and drop the engine out, replace all the mounts for the RS types. I want to remove the tinware from the engine at some point as there are a couple of bits which are at the end of their usefulness, and tidy the rest of them up, plus possibly make myself a carbon or kevlar fan shroud too..

I might as well wait and do them all (g'box, engine) at the same time. Im also thinking about making the switch to monoball top mounts all round while I have good access with the engine out, but thats dependent on the size of my xmas bonus []

thanks for the reply

ben

PS.. any idea on price for the mounts, as you've been doing some investigating?..

 

[964rh]

To be honest, I lost interest after spending hours looking for aftermarket monoballs for the fronts.

Smart Racing in the states has a far amount of kit available. The mounts I've heard about for the rear are made by a company called Wevo.

 

[Dave Wilkinson]

Here's a link to the Wevo engine mounts. Interestingly they now seem to offer two choices of "pillows" to vary the noise transmission etc.

Hope it helps.

Regards

Dave

 

[smallspeed]

good link, thanks.. I actually have a contact for a company that make monoball top suspension mounts for the peugeot WRC cars, and he is happy to make small batches and one off's so I may consider getting some made if I can find someone happy enough to donate their's to measure up!..

I heard there is a difference between pre and post 92 rear mounts, and so while the RS mounts will fit you need a spacer collar about 2" long or something to take up the gap, plus the bolt/stud spacing at the rear is different between the two models.

This is something that I guess could be overcome by having some rear mounts made if I went down this route, although I guess this is a "future mod" rather than anything which is going to happen this year.. another thing to add to the wish-list [&o]

As for the engine/g'box mounts, the WEVO ones look good; I will pick some of those up at some point this year and prepare to do the swap in the winter when the engine is out. Might also see if I can find a re-enforced g'box and engine mount bar somewhere (or again, design and manufacture myself) to take full advantage of the new mounts; there is a G50 mount bar on the wevo site, but its only listed for pre '89 cars

ben

 

[964rh]

I thought it was the 89-90 cars that had different rear mounts but I may be wrong.

If you need numbers for a small batch, count me in if the price is passable to the wallet holder

 

[Steve Brookes]

ORIGINAL: rob hounslow

I thought it was the 89-90 cars that had different rear mounts but I may be wrong.

If you need numbers for a small batch, count me in if the price is passable to the wallet holder

The rear suspension mounts changed part way through the 91 model year so could affect a car delivered late in 1990 or early 1991. The changeover VINs are listed on PET. So if you have an 'M' in the VIN and it's an early number, you need to check if you have early or late mounts.

 

[smallspeed]

I will need to take some measurements and things, so unless someone is upgrading their struts and I can measure them while their struts are out, it will have to wait until I drop my engine and clean up my rear struts in the autumn winter..

the machinist's seems pretty reasonable pricewise and the quality is great. They do lots of aerospace parts as well as motorsport bits for works teams; ive used them quite a lot for machining hydraulic components at work, so they're accurate too!..

If I can find some old knackered top mounts on ebay or get some while they're off a car to measure up then I can draw the parts up and get them priced. Wouldn't be looking to make any money from them, so I reckon they could be quite reasonable, although there's quite a bit of material and machining in the plates which is where the cost is so I might aim to simplify (ugly-ify) them a bit to keep the cost down..

If you or anyone else knows of anyone with an old set of struts and top mounts gathering dust in the garage that I can borrow for a week or two then let me know; would be great to have pre 90 and post 90 types to cover both I guess, depending on what people want