82-928/89-S2

Hi everyone; I just changed out the engine mounts in my S2 using a different method than most of you have probably heard about. It really seemed to make life a lot easier for me so I’ll give you all the details in the hopes that someone else might benefit from it. I followed all the procedures listed in Clark’s Garage about lifting the car off the ground and supporting the bottom of motor with a separate jack (make sure to get a thick/large piece of wood in between the jack and the bottom of the pan in order to spread out the force on the pan). Clark’s Garage then instructs you to disconnect BOTH front and rear pivot connections for the control arms and then LOWER but don’t remove the cross member by loosening the 4 bolts that secure it to the body as far down as they will allow without actually coming out of the body. Then you are instructed to pry the motor around to gain access to swap the old motor mounts for the new motor mounts. Paragon’s website on the other hand, instructs you to disconnect BOTH front and rear connections for the control arms and then completely REMOVE the cross member all together.

I didn’t want to disturb the motor too much since it wasn’t supported all that well and it looked like I was going to have to pry that bad boy to one side or the other a LOT to get those mounts in and out of there. I also didn’t like the idea of having to reinstall that cross member once it was completely out because it is cumbersome to manipulate back into position if you’re doing the job alone, which I was (Paragon recommends you get an extra pair of hands to do this). So I combined Clark’s and Paragon’s recommendations with a little twist of my own.

What I did was disconnect ONLY THE REAR pivot connections for the control arms (the vertical bolts attached to the body) and left the front control arm pivot connections (horizontal bolts that connect the front of the control arms to the cross member) untouched (Don’t forget to scribe in the rear pivot locations!). Then I lowered the cross member as low as I could (as Clark’s Garage recommends) but only left ONE bolt on EACH SIDE of the cross member to hold it up. Don’t forget to disconnect the hold down clip for the power steering line or you will be hanging the cross member up with it! I only needed to disconnect the clip toward the passenger’s side. So now what I have is the cross member hanging on two bolts (one on each end of the cross member) with both control arms still attached to it at the front pivot connections, and the rear pivot connections completely detached from the body. The beauty of this is the control arms (front pivot connections) counterbalance the weight of the cross member so all you have to do to get a mount in and out is to remove one of the two bolts holding up the cross member on the side you want to get access, and pull down on the cross member (closest to the front pivot connection for the control arm is easiest). Since the rear pivot connections for the control arms are disconnected, this gives you the ability to also rotate one side of the cross member (remember you still have a single bolt on the opposite end of the cross member still holing it up) toward the back/front of the car so you have lots of degrees of freedom to manipulate the cross member to get those mounts in there. Please note how the two remaining bolts (one on each end of the cross member) were used to help maintain control/location of the cross member during installation. Only the screw where the mount was being removed was taken out to give freedom of movement while the screw on the opposite side was left in place. The only danger with this is when you are manipulating the driver’s side of the cross member (for an S2) you will be pivoting on the passenger’s side bolt which is in a close fit hole in the cross member so you only want to pull down on the cross member just enough to get the mounts in and out or you could possibly bend the bolt (I had no problem with this at all). When manipulating the passengers side there is no issue since the holes on the driver’s side of the cross member (for an S2) are slotted.

The hardest part of the job was getting those new mounts seated! I bolted the bottom of the mounts in first and then used a pry bar to CAREFULLY pry the tops of the mounts into place. It was a challenge to find a place to react the force of that pry bar so that I didn’t damage anything else under there AND to make sure I didn’t punch a hole in the new mount while I was prying! One other thing I noticed (since I still had the original mounts in there) was that the spacer washers that the factory had on the top of the motor mount would stay firmly in place on the motor mount bracket so I had to be sure to get those things out of there before I put the new mounts in. BTW the mounts were bought from Paragon (Thanks Jason!) and were the genuine Porsche mounts. Hope this helps someone out.