97 Motor Mounts
 

I searched around on the forums a little and found some information but not alot. I ended up tackling the Motor Mounts this previous weekend with my Dad and I figured I would give a little run down so the next person who goes through this won't scream as many four letter words as I did, and perhaps I can pass on a few tricks.

The drivers side is a nightmare. You've got the power steering, steering column, and front drive axle all in the way. The only bonus to this side is that the engine has a rigging eye; the other side did not. We rigged the engine, took the weight off (which surprisingly wasn't hardly any weight at all), made sure the trans mount was loose, removed the drivers side through bolt and raised the engine. We left the passenger side mount intact because my goal was to roll the engine.

I read in another post how someone couldn't get the bottom bolt in on the engine mount and I'll explain that here because I ran into the same problem. I removed the engine mount from the engine, which wasn't hard because this side was already broken. The installation wasn't going well, so I had to break out the shop manual, you must also removed the mount portion from the frame in order to get the new mount in and secure all three bolts. You'll never get the new one in without doing this step because the frame portion has this piece of steel that looks like a sharks dorsal fin. What a pain in the rear, because that fin makes it so that you can't get a ratcheting box wrench on the three bolts that secure it to the frame either. So you must go one 8th turn at a time, luckily the bolts aren't incredibly hard to break loose as they are not crazy tight. The bolts are relatively long though so get a snickers, you're not going anywhere for awhile.

So using a combination of wrapping my arms around the front differential from underneath (working blind) and working in from the wheel well we were able to get this mount done, but it took awhile until we figured out the tricks (removed the frame portion). I would say rough estimate 6 hours, but we learned on this one.

The passenger side took about 2 hours after we learned our lessons. This side has no rigging eye, so you must jack the oil pan, or rig off some unsavory spots. You will need to remove the starter just to make your life easier. The hardest part about this side is that when you go to put the frame portion of the mount back in you must do it in a particular fashion, because this mount is not symmetrical. One side is bigger than the other and hits the frame when you try to swing it in. So be sure to swing it in a way that only the short side comes into contact with the lower frame. Even then it was tight and needed a little persuasion.

The best method that I found for putting the frame portion back in is to turn it sideways and put the dorsal fin in first between the ears of the engine mount from the top. Then feed it down in until you can swing it about 150 degrees and get the portion that the through bolt goes through in there as well. Feed the dorsal fin out one of the bottom sides and then swing it into the middle and back up and into place.

That last paragraph sounds horribly confusing but you'll know what I'm saying when you see it.

Sorry for no pictures but I was covered from head to waist in oil as my remote oil filter lines leak a bit. If you're going to tackle this good luck, and I hope you get it done faster than we did. Be sure to block your engine up so you end the job with as many fingers as you started with.