Anyone ever fabricate their own mounts?

[droptopsf98]

I know McKinney, and Tophat all make mounts, but they're a little pricey in my opinion for what they are. I have a good friend who has excellent fabricating skills. (built his own doors/hood for his porsche) We're going to just set the motor in and make our own mounts.

Has anyone else ever done this? Any pointers that may save me any time/labor/money?

[Joe]

it would help if you told us what car, and engine (i assume its the one under your name, but never hurts to be sure.)

[droptopsf98]

hehe, good point...


S13 RB25 combo

[jrd450r]

Shouldn't be too hard, I bought mine from Low Life Customs who are now missing and out of business, due to being a bunch of 'low lifes', copy them, they deserve it. The only tricky part will be the trans mount.

[b00stinbmx]

i did the s13 rb25 deal.. its so ridiculously easy man. me and a friend were able to do it all in about 6 hrs time. first what we did was get the motor in with a hoist, set it where we wanted it exaclty and set the motor on blocks and jacks, (kept the hoist on it just for safety). i left the stock OEM s13 KA cross member in it and left the stock RB engine brackets that bolt to the block on it. what i first did was jack the transmission up so the shifter position was perfectly center. i used the RB transmission monunt and cut it into 3 pieces. the center and the two "ears". i bolted eveyrthing up then went under the car and tacked some metal rods to connect the 3 pieces together, i then took it off the car and figured out how to make it the strongest and welded a few triangle sections to brace it all up. i then installed that and let it be.

After, we centered the engine perfectly measuring from the crank pulley bolt to the sides of each frame rail, once the motor was perfectly center and the height was at the correct location we tacked in some extension pieces from the cross member to meet the RB engine brackets since they will be about 3-4 inches closet to the front of the car than the KA mounting location. since we used the RB engine brakcets the angle for the mounts wasn't right so we had to make a few different angles to make it sit flat. For the actual mounts i just used some threaded rod with 2 hockey pucks. i've been using this for a few weeks now without any problems. I also added some bracing under the extensions for the crossmember, heres a few pics so you can see how i did it. i had plenty of people look at it and they all said it should be fine. i've been driving the car and it feels perfect. i mean sure it might break in a accident, but i've driven the car pretty hard and nothing has shifted or broken. Id say go for it, it saved me some money and was quite a fun project, makes the rb swap feel a little more rewarding rahter then just ordering up a mount kit.

[b00stinbmx]

[kevwa]

solid mounts FTW

[Effortless]

hey kevwa im doin a rb25 swap into my 91 dime and was wondering how you did the mounts.

[Nesquick]

just get the measurements of the original mounts, get some square tubing, drill holes where needed. done....

[ItzGenX]

just get the measurements of the original mounts, get some square tubing, drill holes where needed. done....

That's what I was thinking. If the guy can fab doors and a hood, this should be a walk in the park with no questions asked. Provided that the engine and trans are supported exactly where and how you want them, just fill in the blanks with steel from there. Then remove welded steel pieces and weld in braces across all the stress points and done. I think it's harder to fab up a work bench.

[andyo]

this is good stuff right here, good stuff!! been looking for stuff like this for quite some time now and now that i found it (thanks to google) i think this is the route im going. Im not a proffesional but i can weld pretty good, especially materials that thick. Anyone knows if the s14 transmission crossmember bolts on to the rb25 transmission? like, not on the car, but do the holes for the transmission mount match with the rb's trans mount studs?