From: mark@wdcwdc.sps.mot.com (Mark Shaw)
Subject: Re: Replacing Rabbit/Jetta/A1 Engine Mounts (long)
Organization: Motorola Western MCU Design Center, Chandler Arizona
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1992 23:40:52 GMT

In article <1992Dec18.191700.5738@csi.jpl.nasa.gov>, eldred@rrunner.jpl.nasa.gov (Dan Eldred) writes:

|> I thought I would share my experience with replacing the infamous right
|> hand engine mount on my '84 Rabbit, for the benefit of others.

|> 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 

The better approach which is in the Haynes manual is to carefully hack
saw the edge of the old mount and then it comes out easy.  I still the
dealer do mine because of the press in job.  They didn't want to go to
all the effort to write it up, so the service advisor found a mechanic
who would do it in his spare time.  Cost me $10.  Such a deal.

|> 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.

When I did it I just marked the timing belt and the top and bottom timing
pulleys with paint and took off the belt.  I didn't have to remove the
intermediate pulley or tensioner.  The only risk here is to make sure
that you tighten the tensioner the right way (don't ask, I don't remember).
If you do it the wrong way the upper cover is hard to get on and the
belt rubs the cover.  If that happens tension the belt by turning the
tensioner the other way (or just remember how you loosened 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.

A new right motor mount does wonders for a VW.
Newsgroups: rec.autos.vw