Top Hat Performance Mounts?

[dareo]

You can go in from the top, just have to lift it high and give it rear bias (so it tilts down to angle in) then its a biatch to line up the transmission and engine mount bolts at the same time. If i had air tools at the time we would have dropped the crossmember. I also dont have anything to roll the crossmember/engine with, another reason we went top down.

[Sil240]

i dropped my motor in straighti didnt tilt it at all

[NISMO_RB25]

i dropped my motor in straighti didnt tilt it at all

I am guessing you didn't have the transmission attached?

I dropped mine with transmission attached from the top as well, at about a 45 degree angle. Then I just used a jack under the transmission to level it up as I lowered the motor. It only took about 10 minutes to dropit in to place.

[Sil240]

Yeah no transmission just the motor

[skillzilla]

I dropped my motor in with the Tophat mounts, and Im slightly pissed. Its an RB20 into an S13, and from what Ive heard/read, these mounts usually work fine. Well, on my car, for some odd reason, the dump pipe still rubs the steering shaft and the intake pipe still hits the hood. Good thing I spent $350 on these "awesome" engine mounts.

[Yellow4g63]

Mine dosen't rub but it's too damn close. Hood closes normaly for me. The stock 02 housing rubbing didn't bother me tho. I knew what I was going to do

[skillzilla]

well, what were ya goin to do??!! (if you cant tell, I want this problem to be over with )

oh, and as far as the up/down install thing goes, I decied to do it from the top, and it wasnt too hard. What I did was take the mounts fully apart, and mount the engine pieces and X-member pieces seperately. Then I did one side at a time, inserting the bushing and bolting it down. Took about 40 minutes of finagling to get it right.

Ya, I dont know why my hood isnt closing. Imma have to cut the skeleton, which sux, but I guess it could be worse.

[Yellow4g63]

well, what were ya goin to do??!! (if you cant tell, I want this problem to be over with )

Bigger turbo+ diffrent manifold+downpipe mang. http://www.nissaninfiniticlub....=4316

[skillzilla]

I hate you. I want my hood to close.

looks like I might as well hook up a BB T3 while Im at it, since a custom dump pipe is in my future anyways.

[Yellow4g63]

lol

[emperor_lunchbox]

so which mounts are better top hat or mckinney?

and which method of installing the engine seems to work best, raising or lowering?

[skillzilla]

OK, my hood does close, I was just being a moron and not taking a screwdriver off the strut tower I say use the tophat mounts, as they are cheaper, you can take them apart, and come with polyeurathane bushings.

For the install, do whatever you think would be easier. I went from the top and it was fine, others had issues with that so they went from the bottom. Its all up to you mang.

[BoostFab]

so which mounts are better top hat or mckinney?

and which method of installing the engine seems to work best, raising or lowering?

i lifted my engine from the bottom, seemed like the best way to me.

[emperor_lunchbox]

thanks alot for the help.

[bigE]

Which mounts are better, I would have to say Top Hat's, the welds are better on the Top Hat mounts, and the design looks better, they pretty much fit the same, the quality just seems much better with Top Hats, plus you can't beat their price, compare it too McKinneys. Top Hats RB20 mounts will not work for a RB25, the transmission mount needs to be changed. There was another unamed shop selling the rb20 mounts off as rb25 mounts which there weren't and people were having fitment issues with the rb25, and complaining to Top Hat, Top Hat should have their RB26 ansd RB25 mounts within a month or so.

Eric

[Yellow4g63]

You haven't even seen the Mckinney mounts yet. I have trust me it's a better fit that the Top Hats. I have them on my car.

[BoostFab]

i have to agree the top hat's kit look pretty top-notch. mckinney recently start to develop their rb20 kit. we'll se how theirs look like when they're released.

IMO, i think the mckinney's rb25 mounts look weak, even though they fit well. i'm not sure how it would hold up on a high power/torque.

[Yellow4g63]

Errr? WTF. Won't hold up? They use Way thicker metal than the top hats. If they had a stress test the Top Hats would get owned.

[dareo]

The tophat mounts (on only the RB20 of course) have such a precise and exact fit that they are a pain to line everything up. Once everythings aligned and the bolts are in it's very solid. The metal is thick enough and the welds are good enough that it should be able to hold way more force than you'll ever get out of an RB20 S13. Lets say your S13 corners at a maximum of 1g..thats gravity. So you have normal gravity pulling your engine to one side of the car, so figure 600-700 pounds of force. All spread across two front mounts and several bolts.

Straight line acceleration? you have both front mounts, and now the transmission mount comes into play securing the engine. Who's kidding who about the RB20DET anyway, its never going to hit massive numbers. I'd give props to the first person to get into the 11s with an RB20. People that ambitious use an SR20 or RB25/26.

Tophat mounts are quality, and if you catch one of his ebay sales you can get em for 350. If i had a digital camera i could show you all the engine bay of my 240 with RB20 and tophats in they place the engine right very well.

[BoostFab]

Errr? WTF. Won't hold up? They use Way thicker metal than the top hats. If they had a stress test the Top Hats would get owned.

yes, they may be officially the first one the have a mount kit for RB25, that doesn't mean they're the best and everyone else suck....come'on you seriously think that way?

my opinion is just base on looking at the mounts, it just doesn't seemed stirdy.... don't take my worthless opinion to heart

[93RPS13]

The tophat mounts (on only the RB20 of course) have such a precise and exact fit that they are a pain to line everything up. Once everythings aligned and the bolts are in it's very solid. The metal is thick enough and the welds are good enough that it should be able to hold way more force than you'll ever get out of an RB20 S13. Lets say your S13 corners at a maximum of 1g..thats gravity. So you have normal gravity pulling your engine to one side of the car, so figure 600-700 pounds of force. All spread across two front mounts and several bolts.

Straight line acceleration? you have both front mounts, and now the transmission mount comes into play securing the engine. Who's kidding who about the RB20DET anyway, its never going to hit massive numbers. I'd give props to the first person to get into the 11s with an RB20. People that ambitious use an SR20 or RB25/26.

Tophat mounts are quality, and if you catch one of his ebay sales you can get em for 350. If i had a digital camera i could show you all the engine bay of my 240 with RB20 and tophats in they place the engine right very well.

sorry to hijack but wat downpipe did you use ? thanks

[Yellow4g63]

yes, they may be officially the first one the have a mount kit for RB25, that doesn't mean they're the best and everyone else suck....come'on you seriously think that way?

my opinion is just base on looking at the mounts, it just doesn't seemed stirdy.... don't take my worthless opinion to heart

Ok Here is why I formed my opinion. I bought the top hat mounts for my car. At 1st I thought they were the same having never seen the Mckinney mounts up close. Till one day I did see them up close. They use a much thicker metal for there mounts. Ok now after I installed mine the steering shaft is real real close to the 02 housing. Now I drop by Mckinney a while back and they had the 1st mounts done and the motor and transmission were in the car. 1st thing I noticed was that the shaft was no were as close as my top hat mounts. The motor sits alot better than the top hat mounts. Now before you start to think they copyed my mounts they didn't. They never saw my mounts or my car with the motor in it.... it's still parked waiting for the pink slip lol.

[Yellow4g63]

The tophat mounts (on only the RB20 of course) have such a precise and exact fit that they are a pain to line everything up. Once everythings aligned and the bolts are in it's very solid. The metal is thick enough and the welds are good enough that it should be able to hold way more force than you'll ever get out of an RB20 S13. Lets say your S13 corners at a maximum of 1g..thats gravity. So you have normal gravity pulling your engine to one side of the car, so figure 600-700 pounds of force. All spread across two front mounts and several bolts.

Straight line acceleration? you have both front mounts, and now the transmission mount comes into play securing the engine. Who's kidding who about the RB20DET anyway, its never going to hit massive numbers. I'd give props to the first person to get into the 11s with an RB20. People that ambitious use an SR20 or RB25/26.

Tophat mounts are quality, and if you catch one of his ebay sales you can get em for 350. If i had a digital camera i could show you all the engine bay of my 240 with RB20 and tophats in they place the engine right very well.

....? :help I have them on my car I know how it sits. I wouldn't say they suck vs someone elses if I haven't seen it for myself.

[dareo]

theres lots of room with my steering column, stock RB downpipe and o2 sensor... i wonder if there's two different revisions of the tophat mount? the ones i got about 2 months ago are the powdercoated version if that makes any difference.

[TheSnail]

In a month ttophat will have rb26 mounts. I get to be the Guineapig.

[FAST-DATSUN]

All our kits RB25/RB26/RB20 now come with all poly mounts(isolstors) and have be tested in several high HP drag cars so the strong enough for all uses. some of our kit have been out there over 3 1/2 years with no problems. REV 7 are also power coated blue for those that did not like paint....

[tophatperformance]

Its true that Mckinneys mounts have thicker metal. But its also true that our 10 gauge boxed steel mounts strength exceed the cast aluminum mounts put on the GTR Skyline!! We think Nissan knows what they are doing.Now for those who will listen, i will tell you about the problems you are having. O2 housing clearence is very tight because the mounts where not really designed to use a stock exhaust set up but it just happened to clear, and it does clear. The reason you may not be clearing is because of incorrect installation, and trust me its easy to do since we never sent instructions, or we also had a run of bad isolators at first so you might have got one of those from Night 7 when he was a dealer. In the future we will also be changing to poly as well.May i get some feed back please?How many people who have Top Hat mounts and had trouble contacted the company who made them?How many of the 2 people who contacted Top Hat about mount problems didnt get satisfaction?We will be upgrading mount designes and adding the RB25 and RB26 in the very near future and hope to be a positive force in the Nissan community.Thanks, Mike

[Sil240]

The Top Hat Performance Mounts are GreatI have them on my RB20/S13Every thing fits good, the 02 housing clearance is good tooI still have the stock turbo and housing for now.I also have the Ceramic coated downpipe which fits perfectly as well and I just ordered the Top Hat Performance Intake Manifold, It should be here on FridayI'll let you guys know how it is, to not have that extra 3 feet of Intercooler piping.For the price you can't beat it.

[totoro001]

has anyone tested the weight distribution after installing their rb20 with both sets of mounts? do either of the mounts move the engine back/down at all? which one better helps evenly distribute the weight of the engine twards the center on the s13's?

[underground]

I know both Mike (Top Hat) and Mack (McKinney)....

Obviously, I went with McKinney Mounts...as at the time, they were the only option...

But, I trust both of these guys...

I don't have any experience with Top Hat Mounts, but I do know McKinneys....

Everybody complains about pricing, but your putting a freaking RB motor in your car...

If you don't have the money for the proper build, then you chose the wrong motor....

You can't be broke and drop RB motors in....

Now that I'm done venting...Lol...

I think both shops are standup guys...

I put my loyalty in McKinney because they are proven, and I know Mack is not the type to screw somebody over....