Bad Motor Mount

[elwesso]

Tom..

I think motor mounts should be last..... transmission mount, then bearing, then driveshaft, THEN motor mounts.....

[91QAZ]

Wes, are you basing that on the amount of work involved in getting the motor mounts replaced? The driveshaft is not cheap, and if it's not bad I'd rather not replace it. I know the motor mounts and trans mounts are bad (at least the service history shows that the dealer recommended these be replaced and prior owner refused just prior to selling it - obviously he didn't want to put any more money into the car). The shaft may be bad too, I tend to think it is, but I was hoping to eliminate some of the other possible contributing factors first. But I CERTAINLY don't fool myself into thinking I know what I'm doing with this car yet. Just trying to pick your brain. BTW, I picked up a '93 TCU yesterday - what a difference in around-town driving - I'm loving it!

Tom

[elwesso]

Im basing it on the PITA factor..... And also my experiece tells that motor mounts wont create problems like that... I drove Jesda's Q with 190k, original motor mouts, my Q with original ones (130K) and so on... if aynthing they cause less than stellar idles... I dont think its really causing your problem... I could be wrong, certianly what dennis says trumps me...

What I would do first is replace the transmission mount (since its easy), but I would try to do that orientation thing in the TSBs and FSM like I said earlier.. Then maybe the center bearing.. THEN the shaft itself... There are plenty of cheaper thing you can do to narrow it down to the shaft being messed up itself...

Im gonna try that orientation thing sometime here, and i pray that helps... id like to have an extra driveshaft that I could get balanced.....

Im very tempted if that the orientation thing doesnt do anything or not enough to satisfy me to drive down to T3 and have them diagnose the car... Vibrations are hard to diagnose over the internet and hard to find unless you have specific experience..

[91QAZ]

I'll drink to that. Who knows how many contributing factors you may have on the vibration issue. Could be one thing, could be five... Dennis' posts on this issue scare me a bit and make me think I may need to replace everything before the vibes will go away. Your point is well taken about the order of approach and symptoms of the bad mounts vs. other causes. I think I've theorized about as much as I can about the vibe - like you said 'hard to diagnose over the internet'. It's time to get some bloody knuckles and start knocking out possible causes and narrowing in on a fix. I have some time off next week - we'll see what I can get done. Appreciate your input.

[maxnix]

I think motor mounts should be last..... transmission mount, then bearing, then driveshaft, THEN motor mounts.....

I'll disagree with that, because at 13 years old, there is no doubt your motor mounts are compressed. There is no hope for alignment of the power train if the motor is not within its designed alignment spedifications, hence a new driveshaft may well be a wasted improvement if it a component of a misaligned power train.

[off2sobe]

Replaced both left and right mounts this weekend. 5 hour job. SAFETY FIRST!! I had the car on jack stands, with a set of stands as backup. Used a floor jack and stand to support the engine. Removed tension rod, sway bar links, motor mounts and traverse links from the crossmember. (Did not loosen the steering rack.) Lowered the crossmember (about 6-8 inches), enough to get to the mounts. Removed the brackets (4 bolts) for each mount (did not even attempt to remove the single nut from the top of the mounts). The only bolt that was difficult was the top rear bolt on the drivers side due to the heat shield partially covering the bolt. I bent the shield a bit to allow better access, put on a short socket and wedged an extension into the socket and tapped the extension into the socket with a small hammer (bending the shield to accomodate the extension).

[maxnix]

Thanks for the particulars in the write up. Now to the rear (transmission) mount!