Motor Mounts

On my last visit to the track I ran on slicks. I was able to navigate turn 7 at between ten and fifteen miles an hour faster than on the street tires. Unfortunately, late in the day I apexed a bit early and had the choice of going off the track or lifting off the throttle. I chose the latter and for the first time in thirty-five or so track days spun the car. It was a particularly violent spin that dislodged the battery (again!) and broke a motor mount. A couple of weeks ago, the new set of motor mounts arrived.

The new parts

I was surprised to see that the inserts are black. They’re supposed to be red. The reds measure a 60 A on the durometer scale. (Hopefully I’m using the term correctly.) The blacks are 75 A, which is harder. I called the vendor and asked about it and was told that Innovative is no longer selling the 60 A for use in the Elise. I’m not sure I’m buying that. It could be that they just shipped the wrong ones. But there’s quite a bit of discussion on the web about which ones to use, so I decided I’ll install these. In theory, I could buy red inserts and replace them.

Today it’s time to install them.

Saturday, November 3

There are four mounts in the car: fore, aft, driver side, and passenger side. In addition to the various discussions I found on the web concerning the hardness, there is also quite a few opinions as to whether to replace all the mounts or not. It is not uncommon for people to just replace the fore and aft mounts, leaving left and right as stock. The original plan was to do them all, but if we run out of time I’m happy just to do the fore and aft.

The idea was that Michael and I would do it. He has a sore back, though, so he invited one of his friends to help. But Michael quickly found out that he was able to do some of the work after all, so I ended up watching and fetching tools as required. There really isn’t room under there for three people.

The guys at work

I’m sure this operation is a lot easier if the car is on a lift, but we don’t have a lift so we just put the back of the car on the ramps. It’s a little cramped, but workable. We did the rear first. It came off pretty easily

The old aft mount

The stock mounts aren’t solid and the new ones are. When we first inspected the mounts, that wasn’t clear to me. The only one we got a good look at was the rear one. I was thinking it was broken worse than it actually is. But it’s pretty broken. It’s not exactly X-shaped, but close enough. The photo doesn’t show it very well but three of the four legs of the X are cracked all the way through.

Forward mounts, new and old

The front mount was a bit tougher to replace. The bushing is pretty stout and we had to persuade it a bit to get it into place. Then there was much finagling required to get the holes to line up for the bolts.

While they were working under the car, I decided to finally “upgrade” the camera mount on the nose of the car. I didn’t give much thought to where the camera should be mounted back when I originally installed it. There are two problems with it. First, I have to take the tow ring off the car to run the camera. That’s not ideal if I have a problem on track and need to get towed. Second, because it’s sideways I need to use two little arms, one of which is essentially a 90 degree elbow. It’s not an elbow, but serves the same purpose. And because of the two arms the camera is farther from the mount itself and more subject to vibration.

Old camera mount (above, horizontal), new camera mount (below, vertical)

With the camera mount in the new location, the camera won’t move around so much and it’ll be even closer to the ground, making it look like I’m going faster! Sadly, the picture shows how beat up the front of the car has gotten. Michael and I have talked about what it will take to effect some fiberglass repairs, so I’m thinking the current beat-up state of the nose is only temporary. (The picture also shows both mounts. The old one is no longer there.)

We finished the job in about three hours. That’s just the fore and aft mounts. We haven’t put the undertray back on the car but I did take her out for a spin around the block. It’s going to take a while to get used to it. There’s a lot more vibration in the cabin. Before the test drive I was joking that it’ll be like a bunch of buzzing hornets. It’s worse than that. She really vibrates quite harshly now. I don’t think it’s enough to loosen the fillings in my teeth, but it’s quite different. On the other hand, there’s a noticeable difference in the feel when shifting gears. I never got past third and literally only went around the block, but I think it’s much improved.

In addition to only doing half the mounts, we haven’t done the trans studs yet. We probably are going about this the hard way, but so it goes. Oh, and it sounds like there’s an issue with the clutch. Michael thinks it’s the throw out bearing. Neither of us heard this noise at the track after the spin, and I haven’t driven the car since getting it home. When it rains, it pours.