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Mountain Off-Road Enterprises Torsion Rubber Motor Mounts |
Installation date: 02/18/06
I’d known that my driver-side motor mount has been torn for about a year, I’d just never got around to replacing it because it really hadn’t caused any problems. But with a trip to Las Cruces coming up at the end of February, I figured it might be time to finally get around to replacing the busted mount. I decided to go with a set of Torsion Rubber motor mounts from Mountain Off-Road Enterprises because I didn’t want the additional vibrations associated with poly mounts and because MORE’s motor mounts have a reputation for being about the best on the market.
The mounts come in a pair of course, and include instructions and a couple of decals. You’ll reuse the factory hardware.
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On both mounts, you’ll remove a 15mm nut from the underside, and on the driver-side mount you’ll remove a 15mm bolt from the top of the mount, and on the passenger-side you’ll remove a 15mm nut from the top of the mount. As I’m sure you know, the XJ’s engine bay is pretty cramped, so you’ll need some long socket extensions to get to the top of the mounts. SWB’ers will still need some long extensions, but they should have an easier time getting to everything.
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The instructions say to use a floor jack and a piece of wood to apply just a little pressure to the oil pan… however I found that I had to lift the whole front end by a good 4″+ by the oil pan to get the motor to lift enough to get the main bolts in and out of the mounts easily.
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The main bolts are 18mm, and the passenger side one is a bit of a pain to get undone because of everything that’s in the way. The driver-side bolt was relatively easy to access from under the Jeep, the passenger side bolt had to be worked on from above.
Here’s the trashed driver-side mount.
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The driver-side mount is constantly in tension due to how the engine rotates under torque, so it is will probably fail before the passenger-side mount. And in fact, my passenger-side mount looked perfectly fine considering it’s nearly 11 years old now. The OEM motor mounts on our TJ have an expansion slot in the rubber, similar to what you see on some OEM LCA bushings, so they should prove to last longer than the old style mounts that were on my XJ.
Here are the new mounts in place. The passenger-side mount is kind of tricky to swap because of the big AC line that runs right over it (it also makes it hard to get a nice photo of the passenger side mount too, haha).
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Initially, the mounts transmitted a lot more vibration than I had hoped, I can’t imagine how bad it would feel with poly mounts. After a while though, I’ve either gotten used to the extra vibs, or the bushings have broken in a bit because I really don’t noticed them as much now as I did when I first installed them. The vibs were really only noticeable at idle anyway. If you’re picky about NVH (noise, vibration, harshness) in your rig, you might want to look into just getting some OEM replacement bushings, otherwise I think it’s going to be hard to beat these motor mounts.
You can get Mountain Off-Road Enterprises products through our very own JeepinOutfitters.com.
For more information contact:
Mountain Off-Road Enterprises
P.O. Box 843
Rifle, Colorado 81650
Telephone: (970) 625-0500
Fax: (970) 625-3747
Email: info@mountainoffroad.com