Finally got the damn drivers-side poly mount into the mount housing and onto the car. Couple of questions:

1) Engine vibration seems overly bad at idle in D, i was expecting it to be a little worse than before but not to the point that every piece of interior trim rattles like hell. I am going to try and raise the idle a little bit.

2) It sounds like a bloody fighter jet when i kick down and give it some welly. Why on earth would an engine mount affect the way the engine sounds?? This is causing a placebo affect and making me think its faster than it was before :hmm: I know that is impossible.

I guess someone with some know-how or experience with poly mounts could help here. Cheers!

First of all, the third gen section has been around long enough to post this there :)

The poly mounts will cause vibration through the car but usually no as bad as you seem to have. They do not dampen the motor at all, they are way too hard IMO

The sound may be the engine sound coming through the body, again the std mount dampens engine sound

I thought a mount was a mount, regardless of car hence going in Tech Torque.

At part-throttle it seems just like normal. It just gets waaaaaay too loud at full throttle, its not a particularly nice sound either, quite agricultural...

When starting and switching off the car, it is much more pleasant. Before, the engine would shake quite a bit, especially when switching off. I have also noticed an improvement in gear shifts. There is no longer a noticable clunk when the gearbox changes when speed drops.

What other options are there other than poly mounts?

Other options are std mounts, they do fail but I think that most here do not actually realise how the mounts on a FWD works

The RH and LH mount hold the engine up. They do not control rock or anything else aside from holding the engine and trans in the engine bay.

The front and rear mount ONLY prevent the engine from rocking, they do not hold the engine up at all.

Now if your RH one has died which usually happens, the engine can drop about an inch or so and put a lot of strain on the front and rear mounts and thus cause the bad gear ****s, more vibrations etc as these fr and rear ones were never designed to support the engine and trans.

In an old, old post (well, last yr anyway).... a member was moulding/reviving mounts with urethane -but from one pics at least he drilled a few holes around the urethane - say about half-way out from the central bush. I assume this was to allow a little bit of flex within the urethane and allow some measure of "give".

You could search for that thread, or try contacting that member? Maybe a few 4-5mm (that's what it looked like) holes drilled (mount out, drill, mount back in) could relieve the harshness you've introduced - best contact that other member about durability of the urethane (You'd have to assume drilling out a bit of material would make the mount less robust).

Otherwise, agree with Mal's post above - excellent info as always.

The improvements FAR outweigh the little annoyances. The gearbox is much much happier, i always knew it was ok mechanically. Gearbox oil before a change was always light red in colour, as opposed to black and full of crap.

Can't explain it, but the mount seems to have 'settled' somewhat since last night and is no way near as harsh on idle this morning. The idle is around 750-800 which is about right. The engine had been jacked up and dropped about a million times last night so that probably upset something too. Gotta say, under full throttle it sounds mean as hell. Scared a sleepy SS driver sitting next to me this morning at a set of lights lol

I noticed a change in engine noise also after fitting mine. Seemed pretty harsh at the time but the noise has sort of faded away now.

ok i have raised the idle to about 900rpm in park/neutral which is about 750-800 in D, which has helped the vibration somewhat. Are there any side-effects of this other than fuel usage?

One thing i forgot to mention, the bolt nearest the block was stuffed when we pulled it out at Brad's place last weekend. The bottom looked like it had melted or fouled on something because it was a mess. On its way out, it has stripped the bolt hole completely, no thread left. The bolt is about 3/4 in now, but just spins when trying to turn it with socket wrench. The bolt hole is also part of the block :eek2:

With the bolt-hole on the block, does it "bottom-out" or pass-through the casting of block.?

Esp if you eever have engine out, I suppose you could put a heli-coil down it, to suit replacement standard bolt (every self-serve wreckers I've been to is littered with these bolts, where folks have raided this engine mount!).

If it passes through a cast lug of block, so there is a hole straight through - maybe put a narrower longer bolt straight through and nut on the bottom. Make a bit of a bush to go down the engine mount hole.

Is there any usable thread at all in the block - could a shorter bolt (or your bolt packed at the top with a heap of washers) carry any weight at all?

Or, do nothing, not worry about it.

it looks like the whole thing is gone, i ran my finger down it (giggity) and it felt pretty roughed up. No chance of bolting it up from the bottom, the hole ends within the block casting and not through the other side. I might investigate this heli-coil option. Thanks heaps