From: eldred@rrunner.jpl.nasa.gov (Dan Eldred)
Subject: Replacing Rabbit/Jetta/A1 Engine Mounts (long)
Organization: Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1992 19:17:00 GMT

Netters:

I thought I would share my experience with replacing the infamous right
hand engine mount on my '84 Rabbit, for the benefit of others.
Unfortunately, the Bentley manual, which is usually very good, is curiously
missing any but superficial details about removal and replacement of the
mount, so I got to discover it all for myself.  Here's what I learned.

I bought the car new and it now has 170,000 miles.  For the last several
tens of thousands of miles, the engine vibration in the passenger compartment
has gotten worse, with buzzes and rattles appearing everywhere.  Based
on conversations with VW mechanics and my monitoring of the Net, I was
certain that the right-hand mount was shot.  So, without even looking
at the old one, I bought an aftermarket mount ($20) and set out to replace
the old one.

Four bolts connect the mount to the engine, and one bolt goes through the
center of the mount to connect it to the car frame.  The center bolt is
easily removed, though there wasn't quite enough room for a ratcheting
socket wrench so I had to remove it with a box wrench.  Of the four bolts,
one is an allen head bolt which is visible from the engine compartment.  To
remove it, you need a very close quarter 6mm allen wrench.  You'll probably
need to grind one down to fit it into the tight space.  I brazed a small
piece of allen wrench to a piece of steel to remove it.  If you can't do
this or don't want to, there is just enough room to remove it with vice-
grips.  I recommend that you replace this bolt with a hex-head bolt anyhow,
so I wouldn't worry about chewing it up a bit.  The other allen head bolt
is accessible from beneath the car (turn the wheels to the right), and
is straightforward to remove.

The remaining two bolts holding the engine mount bracket are beneath the
upper timing cover, whose removal I assume everyone is familiar with.
These bolts are not easily recognized as holding the bracket, as the
bracket itself is hidden by the sheet metal of the lower inner timing
cover.  One of these two bolts is the one with the 10mm stud which
holds on the upper timing cover, while the other is a standard 13mm
hex head (at least on my Rabbit).  While I was able to get the old
mount out by removing these two bolts, I was unable to replace it
with the new one despite nearly an hour of jacking and manhandling
the engine, bashing knuckles, and trying to coax it in with colorful
language.  More on this later.

The engine mount was indeed in pretty bad shape, with the inner part
completely separated from the outer part.  The bad news is that the old
mount has to be pressed out of the bracket and the new one has to be
pressed into it.  This isn't mentioned in the manual, though it says
that the left mount requires a press (maybe they confused right for
left?).  I suppose I might have succeeded at chiseling out the old
one and hammering in the new one, but I didn't feel like struggling
with it nor taking a chance with the new one, so I brought the parts
to a VW dealer and he did the job for $45 (!!!).  In fairness to the
dealer price, the mechanic said that he had to chisel out the old mount
himself, and this was based on 45 minutes of labor, which is probably
what the job would have taken me to do.  If you try to do the job
yourself, make sure that you get the orientation of the new mount right,
with the arrow on the mount pointing upward in the installed positi 

After much struggling trying to get the new mount back into position
I decided that I wasn't going to succeed without removing more sheet
metal.  In particular, I had to remove the lower inner timing cover.
First you have to remove the lower timing cover, which is made of
plastic.  You have to remove the fan belt pulley from the crankshaft
(4 allen head bolts) and the water pump pulley (3 allen head bolts).
I'm not quite certain you actually have to remove the water pump pulley.
The lower timing cover had already been removed;  now I removed both
the timing belt tensioning pulley (a single nut, easy to remove, though
I had to jack up the engine to get enough clearance to get it off) and
the timing gear on the intermediate shaft (a single bolt, torqued
on pretty hard--I held it from turning by bracing it against a socket
placed over a 13mm bolt accessible through a hole in the gear).
Then the lower rear sheet metal came off easily.
 
With the engine thus disassembled replacing the mount was very easy,
though I had to wiggle the engine a bit to get all four mount bolts
to align with their holes.  Reassembly was the reverse of disassembly.
One additional task is to retime the timing belt, which is covered
in the Bentley manual.
 
Since I was doing mounts, I also replaced the front mount at the same
time (the one below the radiator).  To get enough clearance to replace
it I had to loosen the rear mount (2 bolts), and the right mount had
already been removed, which helped allow the engine to be moved around
more.  The front mount is held by a bracket which is easily removed with
2 bolts.  Replacing it was a bit of a tight squeeze but was possible
once I got the engine into just the right position.  The original front
mount didn't look too bad, and probably would have been fine if I had
just rotated it by 180 degrees (there is no preferred orientation), which
could be done without actually removing it.
 
The results were very good.  The vibration in the passenger compartment
is very much reduced.  Also, a clunk which used to occur when going over
big bumps disappeared.  The car now feels very tight and rattle free.
One minor problem is that it is now slightly difficult to shift into first
gear--I have to pull the shift lever to the left harder than before.  I
assume that the engine alignment has shifted slightly due to the new
mount, and that a simple adjustment of the shift linkage should fix this,
though it's not enough of a problem for me to do anything about it.
 
I hope this helps...
 
        - Dan           eldred@rrunner.jpl.nasa.