The time had finally come after putting so many miles on the Scion to replace the motor mounts. After seeing the engine/transmission move more and more especially when put into gear it was obvious the mounts were shot. On most front wheel drive cars, there are four mounts all together, one on the passenger and driver's side, hooking the "front" of the engine where the belts are to the passenger side frame and one on the transmission holding the assembly to the driver's side frame. One mount holds the front of the engine/transmission to an anchor point on the front of the sub frame while another holds the rear of the assembly at the transmission to another anchor point on the sub frame. Little would I realize how much of a Charlie Foxtrot this job would be.
I started with the mount holding the powertrain to the front of the sub frame assembly as this one was the easiest to get to. I had to remove the plastic splash pan to expose the underside of the engine in order to get to the bolts holding the old mount to the car. After removing these and the single larger bolt that held the mount to the bracket that's bolted to the engine, I was quickly able to get the mount out. Of course it was completely shot, having separated inside and for all intents useless. Out with the old and in with the new. Now here's where the fun begins. The next motor mount I attacked was the one on the passenger side attached to the "front" of the engine. After an examination I found I had to remove the power steering oil reservoir and the coolant overflow bottle from the fender well in order to open up the area for me to be able to get to the bolts to remove the mount. Simple? Nope. The hoses on the PS reservoir were stuck and the spring hose clamps were a PITA to get off. I ended up having to cut them with my battery rotary tool and cut off wheel (I would later have to replace the short length of rubber hose due to it being damaged from this) in order to get the hoses separated from the reservoir bottle. Once the bottles were free I then pulled the bolts from the bracket in order to remove it so I could get the old mount out. I had a jack under the engine to hold it up while doing this. As for the bracket I ended up having to put two feet of extensions onto my ratchet to be able to reach a nut that was holding the bracket to the block from underneath. Once I did this I still wasn't able to fully get the bracket free because of the tightness of the space in this area so I just said screw it and moved it up on the long studs enough to allow me to free the old motor mount from its old home. After removing the old mount I found that it too was shot. After chucking it into the scrap can I put the new mount in place and reassembled everything, taking time to clean up some of the spilled oil from the power steering reservoir. Things only got worse as I advanced. Now for the piece de resistance. The rear transmission mount. This scourge of satan was tucked away underneath the powertrain at the back, in a spot where access was horrible at any angle. Even a quick search on Youtube found nothing of any help regarding how to get this mount out. Closest bit of info I got was the idea of trying to "squirrel" it out from the side behind the spindle. Nothing more. WTF??? After pulling the bolts free from under the mount where the piece was bolted to the K member, I had to jack up the car and remove the tire then put a socket with a long extension on the impact wrench to remove the large bolt holding the old mount to the bracket on the back of the engine. Once the mount was free now the fun began. Prior to looking on line I tried to see if there was a way to remove the piece from underneath by the exhaust pipe. I even went so far as to pull the pipe from the flange to see if it was possible. Nope, it wasn't so I put the pipe back up then after finding out that the only bit of advice was to remove it from the side through the fender well, that's where I focused on. After wiggling and fighting the unnecessarily large mount to get it to the point where it was in the fender well, I found that it was still unable to get free. The secret to removing this POS from its tomb? I ended up disconnecting the sway bar from both sides in order to swing it down to get the extra clearance, which wasn't much, but still enough that after some more finessing I was able to get the piece fully removed from the car. Even putting the new mount in was the same BS just in reverse. After getting the mount in and all the bolts replaced, I reassembled the sway bars and moved on to the final mount. It couldn't be this bad could it? Surprisingly, the last mount, the one holding the transmission to the driver's side frame was actually not that bad, all things considered. I did still have to remove the battery and its tray, along with the whole air cleaner box to gain access to the mount. While this might sound like a lot, in reality it wasn't. The bolts that held these parts in were easy to get to, allowing me to remove everything quickly. Once opened up the four bolts holding the mount to the frame were quickly removed and the one large bolt was also quickly moved. With the powertrain on a jack, I was able to get the mount completely out without any struggle or hassle. After getting everything put back together I was able to finally rest easy with the idea that I was finally done with this Charlie Foxtrot of a job. After running the car and finding that the mounts were good and replacing the steering hose after finding it to be damaged, we can finally put the car back into service with the comfort that the engine isn't going to jump out of the engine bay.
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