Essell55mb

Well, car up in the air , under tray covers off and it looks a little bit trickier than expected !

So a few questions for anyone that may be able to help,

To allow access to remove the mounts there seems a massive range of what people have done, Tavarish seems to have got away with just bending a power steer hard pipe - however I don't know how high he had to jack up his engine, I'm suspecting a lot which doesn't make me feel comfortable,

- Moving the air con compressor, it seems 3 bolts. Has anyone done this ? Can you leave it in situ and just shove it forward, does it move that much , or do you need to de-pressurise and remove ?

- Jacking up high...... do the lambda sensors/ wiring not hit the heat shielding ?, there only looks about an inch clearance between them

- Removing the exhaust, does the whole exhaust have to be removed or can the downpipes be disconnected and they hang low enough to gain access ? Also along the same lines, what is the gasket used on the down pipe since I assume this will need to be replaced if its disconnected ?

- The alternator side one which is apparently 'easy' it looks as though there is a hard pipe in the way which would prevent anything getting through ( ie the mount ) . Or does access change once the engine is jacked up a bit ?

Any other tips more than welcome !

Thanks for any help.

Plutoe

Hey Biff, for get the shoulda coulda HS---post your VIN

FxFormat

I did my buddy's car the way tavarish did, just jack up the engine enough to wiggle the mount out. Don't be scared, bend the power steering line enough to wiggle the mount out. You don't want to remove the exhaust, a lot of work.

desired_speeds

You don't need to remove the exhaust. Remove the bottom 2 bolts (13mm) and loosen the tops (16mm) then just stick a block of wood between the jack and the back of the oil pan and jack it up. You'll have to jack it up pretty high - watch the oil cooler lines because they're the shortest and least flexible hoses. The passenger side will comes right out at the right angle and the drivers will be just enough room to slide over the ps lines and out.

Essell55mb

Thank you for the tips guys they did help.

So just out of interest I will add my comments now the job has been done,

In the UK there were no suppliers for the special 16mm spanner to access the engine mount top bolt. To get round this I cut down a 16mm ring spanner and welded a 1/2 inch socket to the end. I also cut down a 16mm ratchet spanner for once the bolt was undone.

PASSENGER SIDE ( UK ). DRIVERS SIDE(US). Air con compressor side
I found access to undo the bolt was reasonable from under the car by the downpipe. As mentioned in previous posts to get the mount out it is necessary to raise the engine a lot and also carefully bend some of the hard power steer lines out of the way.


DRIVERS SIDE (UK). PASSENGER SIDE (UK). Alternator side
On my UK 2004 car the air con hard pipe obstructed the access to remove the mount via the same path as the other side. There was NO way the mount was coming out this route without totally removing this air con line and regassing etc ....
I removed the alternator which was not hard and in fact I got a feel for removing the mount on this easier side before tacking the harder other side. Maybe the US cars with the steering coupling on the other side have a different route for this pipe ?


In fact the mounts looked fine removing them at 50K. The ally parts had the same corrosion as the rest of the engine bay so I don't believe they had been replaced. I did these as a matter of preventive maintenance and quite enjoyed the job overall but I'm surprised some people are saying they are replacement items every 30K. Or maybe I'm just not driving hard enough !

Creative Steel

One thing to keep in mind is just because the engine mount is not leaking, does not mean it isnt bad. I see many engine mounts that are sagging over 3/4" of where they should be.