Top engine mount

[Mighty306]

Went to replace the top engine mount today as had some symptoms suggesting it had failed.  Unfortunately I discovered cracking going the whole way round the captive nut.  (Took me a while to work out what was going on as dirt in the bottom of the mount point was hiding the cracks).

   

A closer look.
   

I know this is a common problem but have struggled to find info on fixes.  Am hoping it can be sorted with the engine still in the car.  My thoughts were to drill holes through the cracks, initially spaced by about a drill bit width.  I'd then spot weld in to each of the holes.  If that works I'd drill the spaces between the 1st set of spot welds and then add a second set of welds.  Not sure if that will be strong enough to stitch it all together though.

Any ideas would be very welcome.

[Seb_Ryan]

Drill hole in suitable plate, line up holes, weld plate job done

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[Mighty306]

Thanks.  Have seen others do that but don't want to raise the mounting point too much & possibly throw things like the gear linkages out. Would 3mm plate do the job?

[Mighty306]

So, I finally got around to doing something about this.  I did ask around about getting it fixed. Was steered towards R H Davey welding (Daveyboy from the GTI-6 club) who apparently has fixed quite a number of these but they're all the way down in Southampton.  Also approached some local garages but in the end decided to have a bash at it myself.

The main problem is I don't have a MIG welder.  I only have an little inverter arc welder.  All the advice is not to weld anything thinner than 3mm with an arc welder but I like a challenge and have managed to weld 2mm steel before with it.  Set to DCEN so as not to put too much heat in to the work and only weld in very short bursts for the same reason and it seems to be OK.  You don't get very pretty results with stop-start welding like that though.

As planned I partially drilled out along the crack and wanted to drop little spot welds in to each drill hole.  The first one went quite nicely but much of the rest wasn't quite so neat and I built up too much weld that needed a lot of grinding back.  I was just thankful I didn't burn through the mount point!

   

I realised when looking at this pic that I'd missed a little bit of the crack in a couple of places and went back and filled it later.

   

   

After that I fixed in a bit of 2mm plate.  If I was doing it again I wouldn't curve the plate up the sides of the mount so far as it made it very difficult to get the right angle to weld it in.  Although I got it welded firmly in place the results were embarrassingly messy ....hence no image of that!!

   

For now there are no more creaking/clunking noises from the O/S tower area and fingers crossed it will stay that way.

[cully]

good repair

I had the same issue with mine
i bashed out a 5mm plate and stick welded it in the hole, also welded some side shims to stop engine rock

[Mighty306]

Nice job Cully. Your mount failure was more serious than mine by some way I'd say. Your welding is way better than mine too!

I might yet add some side shims as I don't think that part of the mount is sitting tight in there.

[cully]

Your welding is way better than mine too!

grinders and paint can cover most of the unsightly bird droppings