[Shotimes] motor mount pt 2 (or) stay away from pioneer mounts!

[Hartberger, Jason M. AT2 (AW)]

Ok, so I finally worked up the nerve to actually dig into the engine (on
my 94 ATX) to figure out precisely what happened. The good news is that
the rear mount is fine... the bad news is the front motor mount (pioneer
products PN 601175, solid) completely separated. It just snapped in
half. This is after three days of use. Well, maybe four. I got it from
AAP for about $80 after the employee discount (20%). Fortunately, it
didn't tear the heater core out (although it did #*%@ up the butterfly
controller connector on the back surge tank up pretty bad). The plastic
sleeve holding the cruise control cable in the throttle bracket got
pulled out and was hanging on its little hole, and that's what was
causing the engine to run really high. Once I reseated it the engine ran
fine.

I really lucked out; the engine still runs quite nicely. I put it in
reverse and the engine moved a little but it shot up about 5 inches when
I put it in drive, so that pretty much told me the front motor mount
broke. This is crap, that thing lasted all of four days. Taking it back
out was pretty easy, though, I only had to take out one half at a time!
I'm out to sea for a week so the car's up on jacks (I hope I don't mess
the subframe up, the sway bars on it mean jacking up one corner =
jacking up three corners) cos obviously the motor mount isn't in there
any more (gotta get that money back, I'm poor!). So I sent a really
nasty email to pioneer products and I recommend to all of you that you
stay the hell away from their motor mounts! They sell both a hydraulic
mount and a solid mount, and I know at least the mount I got (solid) had
the top mounting plate not parallel to the bottom stud, and they have to
be parallel for everything to line up. So if you do get one, make sure
they're parallel or you'll strip the bolt holes up top out cos the holes
in the mount won't let the bolts go through straight!

*sigh* live and learn, though. Anybody remember those old Pennzoil
commercials where they had the engines jumping out of the cars and
running to the nearest Pennzoil place? Well that's kinda what happened
to my car... not used to being able to see the engine from inside the
car while driving down the road!

Jason

94 red ATX 123K  runs fast, looks bad
95 blue ATX 170K runs slow, looks good (the wife's, of course)