- You know what I love?
I love parts that are low key, easy to install,
and make a big impact.
But what are those parts?
Today, we're messing with engine mounts.
And I know you probably never thought
to change your engine mounts
because they're honestly pretty damn boring.
But they're also important and cool.
So today, we're going to install a set on the Miata
and along the way we'll talk about what they do,
how they work, and what the options are out there,
so you guys can choose a set for yourselves.
I'm Zach, this is Money Pit, let's do it.
(upbeat music)
(calm music)
- (whistles) Weighs like two pounds.
Do you see those little boys, stuffed way down in there?
Those are the stock engine mounts
and those are what we gotta remove today.
So, your stock mounts start out soft
and they get even softer over time.
You see how much engine movement we have upfront?
That's terrible, that is not what we want.
(engine revs)
So today, we're gonna fix that.
A lot of people say
you have to take off the exhaust manifold
but we're gonna try to do it
without removing the exhaust manifold and see if it works.
(squeaking)
(jacks rattling)
We're getting the wheels off
of the front of the Miata right now.
That'll give us a little better access to the sides,
which is where the engine mounts are.
(drill grinding)
So we'll get the wheels out of the way,
and then we should be able to get to all of the hardware
for the engine mounts.
All right, we got the car up in the air, the wheels off,
and we're ready to dig in and rip out
those old floppy engine mounts.
But before we go any further,
let me put you guys onto some game
about what the pros and cons of what engine mounts even are.
Why are we doing this?
First off, you don't want a floppy engine.
And a good aftermarket performance oriented engine mount
keeps your engine nice and tight.
Which means that when you put the pedal down,
rather than your engine twisting a bunch,
it just twists your tires, which is great for performance.
That's the best way to make it out of a corner,
but it's not just about performance.
It's also about the way it feels.
A car with a good set of engine mounts, in my opinion,
makes the car feel so much more connected.
The engine feels like it's connected to the chassis,
and then you feel connected to the engine through that,
which is awesome.
Now, that all sounds great, but what are the cons?
Well, really there's only one biggish con,
depending on you and how you feel about this
and it's called N.V.H.
That stands for noise, vibration, and harshness.
And your engine creates a lot of all those three things.
Your stock mounts, well they absorb most of it
so it doesn't make it through to the chassis,
it doesn't make it through to your ears,
but these sweet aftermarket mounts,
they keep the engine in place real nice,
but they also transmit a lot more of that N.V.H.
to the cabin.
Now, in my opinion, a little bit of N.V.H. in the cabin
let's you know you're driving a performance oriented car.
I like it, it makes you feel connected,
it's more fun and spirited.
So in my opinion, the pros far outweigh the cons.
And you know what else is great?
The ones that we bought only cost about $230.00
and generally speaking, that's the ballpark you can expect
to pay for engine mounts for most platforms.
So if you wanna get a set of mounts for yourself,
for your platform, hit up the Internet,
hit up the old Google, check out the forms,
and see what's out there.
See what people are saying,
see how they feel in your specific car,
and base your choice off of that.
(calm music)
We got the intake slightly removed
and we got the coil pack out,
so we got some cursory work done up top.
Now we're ready to go below and get those engine mounts out.
So one of the big parts of changing engine mounts
is that you're gonna have to support your engine.
And you're gonna have to lift it up,
especially in the case of the Miata,
we're gonna have to lift it
to get the stock engine mounts out.
There are a few ways to do that.
What most people have is a jack
and a little piece of a two by four.
So that's what we're going to use.
We don't need that yet, the engine mounts are still in place
but the next thing I'm gonna do
is pull out engine mount hardware.
So I'm gonna get our jack and piece of wood in place,
so that when we disconnect our engine mounts, nobody dies.
(drill grinding)
Okay, one nut, one washer.
All right, so this nut is loosened.
I'm gonna leave it threaded on, just as a fail safe,
while I loosen the other side.
(drill grinding)
Okay, now this side is off and the nut's fully off.
We're ready to jack up the engine a little bit
and separate the engine mounts from the sub-frame.
They've been smashed together for 25 years,
so it might take a little pressure to get them apart.
(gentle music)
Our engine mounts are coming apart
and we're ready to remove the rest of the bolts.
You can see one right there.
Okay so, we got the engine mounts loose from the sub-frame,
we've lifted the engine about half and inch.
Everything's going swimmingly so far.
Now we're ready to get at all the hardware
that holds the engine mounts to the engine.
So we've got three bolts
holding the engine mount to the engine
and then one extra just holding on to that starter bracket.
(tool rattling)
This should make today go a little bit more smoothly.
(tool rattling)
Somebody just almost lost an eyeball.
- [Eddie] Or a lens.
- (laughs) Probably should've seen that coming.
So we're taking our hardware out of our engine mounts.
I got the first bolt out
and all these bolts are gonna be different lengths.
We need to remember where they came from,
just for when we go to put them back in.
One of the easiest ways to remember
is just to make a little rudimentary drawing.
I'm no artist, but it'll do the trick,
and you just push the hardware in to where it came out of.
And then when you go to put it back in,
just look at your drawing.
Okay, so there are our bolts of different lengths.
Held in the places where they will return to someday,
hopefully.
So this mount is completely disconnected
and ready to come out.
All we gotta do is jack up the engine and wrestle it out,
but I guess before we do that,
we might as well go take off all the hardware
from the other engine mount.
So let's do it.
(tools grinding)
All right, we have some completely detached engine mounts
and now, all we have to do get them out
is lift up the engine as far as we can go
and wrestle them out.
How hard can it be?
(laughs) Probably pretty hard.
Now when you jack up the engine,
you wanna be mindful and careful
that you're not squishing anything, cutting any wires,
pinching any hoses or breaking anything, you know?
All right, that looks like maybe about it.
See what we got.
(parts clanging)
Tight, tight, tight, tight, tight.
And then, oh yeah, look at that.
(calm music)
That's where a lot of flop and slop comes from,
that is a completely destroyed engine mount.
This thing was ripped in half,
and literally just doing nothing.
This thing's gonna feel so much better.
Just even getting on power out of a corner,
you know, you hit the gas pedal,
rather than everything twisting around and flopping
and then putting power down,
with new mounts it's just gonna be like
(makes engine noise).
Now let's get that other side out.
If it goes even remotely as easily as that did,
I'll be happy.
Oh yes, she's ripped.
That's great news.
Look at this.
This is gonna work.
What wonderful, wonderful, wonderful news.
That's exactly what I was hoping,
that this mount is also destroyed.
Man, these things were literally doing nothing.
That's awesome,
this thing's gonna feel so much better with new mounts.
They were soft to begin with, but now they're doing nothing.
So if these are basically a ripped in half marshmallow,
these are basically some big, buff, muscle laden rocks.
So these are made by a company called Innovative.
They're basically bent sheet metal with some poly bushings.
Now, when we're talking about engine mounts,
we're pretty much gonna be talking about
one of three things.
So you'll have rubber mounts, you'll have poly mounts,
or you'll have solid mounts.
Rubber is gonna be the most comfortable,
the most absorbent of all the noise,
vibration, and harshness.
Where poly is gonna be a lot more resistant
to any of that flex or any of that absorption,
but it is gonna be a little bit noisier in the cabin.
Your third option is solid mounts,
and it's basically just metal, right?
Just metal mounting the engine to the chassis
and that is gonna create the most noise
and that's some real race car stuff.
Now the Miata, while it's clearly a race car,
we do want it to also be kinda comfortable.
So I went with a 75 durometer poly.
The durometer of poly is how you measure its hardness,
it's firmness.
The lower the number, the softer it is.
The higher the number, the harder it is.
These should last the life of the car.
I don't ever think I'll need to do these again.
Now let's see if getting these into the car
is anywhere near as easy as getting the old ones out.
I have a feeling it's not gonna be.
(squirting)
We've got the engine mount out
and it's really dirty where it was.
That area hasn't been touched in years.
So while it's out, I'm going to take this opportunity
to do a little housekeeping.
Just using a little bit of brake cleaner and a rag.
And we're not going overboard,
I'm not gonna try to get this clean enough to eat off of,
but I would like to get most of that gunk out of there.
Now I'd say it's time to try to stick in this engine mount
and see if we can get it in there.
(calm music)
(tools rattling)
Oh, God.
(tools rattling)
Oh, my god.
(calm music)
All right, so it's really important
that you torque these bolts correctly
because you don't want your engine mounts
to let go of your engine or your chassis.
So I've got my whole extension gang up in here,
and we're torquing the bolts to the engine,
down to about 40 foot pounds, perfect.
The driver's side mount's totally torqued
down to the engine.
Now it's time to go do the same thing
to the passenger's side.
(calm music)
So far, the juice has been worth the squeeze.
I mean this is a little bit fiddly, you know,
trying to struggle my hands
into the areas I need to get them in.
But overall, not too bad.
I can see what I need to do, I just need to get it done.
(wrench rattling)
Now if you've ever got a bolt that you're trying to start
and you're unsure about the threads,
even if you're not unsure,
it's not a good idea to go using power tools to ram them in.
You gotta do it by hand and feel it.
You want that thing to just ride right in.
(calm music)
It's like a carnival game.
Poking these bolts through this whole.
(calm music)
Sweet, okay.
With that, all of our bolts
holding the engine mounts to the engine
are torqued and in place.
So, now we just need to line up the studs
that hang and drop into the sub-frame,
get them lined up and carefully, gently, gingerly
lower the jack and lower those studs into their holes
and then put these lower nuts on, tighten them down,
and that's it.
Let's see how it goes, let's see if we can find the holes.
(calm music)
(tools rattling)
So, a little misaligned there.
I think if I loosen the bolts on the engine mount
then we should be able to drop that thing in.
No problem, which isn't a big deal.
It'll take just another minute.
Interesting, what's that?
(calm music)
Okay, so we've got both studs
through the holes on the sub-frame.
Which is great, we're close.
So now all we gotta do is tighten them up,
torque them down, put the wheels on,
put the coil pack back in, put the intake back on,
and go drive this thing.
(drill grinding)
(tools rattling)
(calm music)
All right, this is the moment we've been waiting for.
Let's see how she feels.
(engine roaring
Doesn't move at all.
I feel a little bit more vibration through my butt,
through the seat, and through the pedals,
which is exactly what I want.
With the engine so connected to the car,
I feel connected to the engine.
And that's honestly exactly what I'm looking for
in a car like the Miata.
I wanna feel connected, I wanna feel everything
that's going on.
I wanna feel everything in the road,
and engine mounts are a great way to start feeling more.
(engine revving)
Even downshifts feel better, it just feels tighter.
It feels more crisp.
So let's see here,
we installed some engine mounts in a couple of hours,
that cost a couple hundred bucks.
And they made, in my opinion, a huge impact,
especially when you compare them
to the torn in half engine mounts
that came out of this thing.
So in my opinion, especially on the Miata,
engine mounts are worth it, 100%.
And with that, that's gonna do it for us this week.
Thank you guys so much for watching.
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See you guys next week.
(calm music)