How To Examine Your Vehicle’s Engine Mount

• Shaf Younus


• 25 Mar 2015

In one of our previous articles, 6 Symptoms of Bad Engine Mounts in Old Cars, we mentioned some important symptoms that surface due to bad engine mounts. Moreover, the article also included some brief information about the importance of a flawless engine mount in a car. If you experience one or more problems mentioned in that article, you must try to inspect your car’s engine mount before visiting a workshop and bearing heavy bills. Below are few steps you need to follow in order to check your car’s engine mount:

• Raise the hood of your car, use a powerful flashlight to locate the engine somewhere near the dipstick’s top. If unable to locate, just start your car and locate the engine from its sound. Once located, turn off your engine.

 

• Focus your flashlight on the extreme dimensions of the engine to look for engine mounts. Here’s how it looks like:
  
  Try to look for such components on the sides of your engine.

 

• Try to inspect the engine mount for some signs of breakage. Before primarily focusing on the metal surface of engine mount. Try to look at the rubber filling of engine mount to find some kind of cracks, splits or other signs of damage. Also try to check if the rubber filling has gone very hard. Hard rubber fillings can also result in too much noise and vibration specially on idling.

 

• Next, check the hydraulic mount for signs of leaks, rust and other kinds of damage. You may also find your mounting shields rusted or broken. These mounting shields are meant to keep the mounts intact with the vehicle’s frame.

 

• To further check your engine mount, ask somebody to start the engine of your car. Keep your flashlight focused on the engine. Observe the vibration of the engine. Ask somebody to change the gear from P(parking) to R(reverse) and vice-versa in case of an automatic (in the case of a manual transmission car, engage the handbrake, put the car in first gear and quickly release the clutch and depress it again) to observe the vibration increase and rattling noises. During this shifting of gears, the engine of your car should have less than 0.5 inch movement from its original position without any sort of banging or rattling noises. Else, you have got a faulty engine mount.

 

• It is necessary to keep your hand and tools away from the engine components and belts to avoid any sort of damage. Moreover, do not try to tighten or loosen your car’s engine mount unless you have a proper technical assistance.

 

• If you have technical knowledge about engine mounts, only use pry bar to flex engine mount.

 

In most cases, worn out or lose engine mounts need immediate replacement or else they can result in rupture and can be a trouble for your car. In case of solidified rubber filling, you will only need to replace the rubber fillings and that may do the job for your motor mount problems.
Hardened rubber fillings not replaced on time may also result in direct effect on engine mount and the repair cost will multiply due to negligence. I hope I have covered the necessary bits.

Happy Noiseless Driving!