Engine motor mounts are small metal pieces that are supposed to attach to your engine on one side and the other to your engine bay. Their overall function is to keep the motor stabilized. Motor mounts look different for each car since they need to fit into different designs of each motor, but their structure is very much the same. They are made out of steel or some other metal and protected by plastic or rubber. Since it seems that it is very easy to upgrade motor mounts, why isn’t this done by manufacturers while the car is in construction? The right answer would be that motor mounts are made to attract everyday people, who don’t know much about and don’t want to think about motor mounts. They attract people who don’t want to hear their engine working or feel its vibrations. And if you look at it that way, the manufacturers do a pretty good job. To make this happen, motor mounts need to be very soft and able to absorb any thrust between the engine and the car’s frame, so the passengers don’t feel any engine vibrations.
This outcome is defined as a driveline lash by the performance tuning companies [source: Anthony Woodford Racing]. What does this mean? When you want to accelerate your motor produces torque because it wants to go forth, but it loses some of the torque. The soft motor mounts capture it and the engine shifts around because any extra movement would cause uncomfortable motion for the passengers. However, if the lost torque could instead diverse from the soft mounts and move to the wheels, then, as a result, the car would transfer more power directly to the ground.
Note from the Author:
One alternative to the motor mount is a hockey puck. It not a good alternative but people have used them for that purpose some 10 years ago since this turned out to be an inexpensive way to get a motor mount’s improvements.
The material of a hockey puck is very much similar to the motor mount, hard rubber. People probably did this because even the most expensive polyurethane mounts at the time were not good enough. The young men who performed engine swaps bought hockey pucks as opposed to new motor mounts.
Sources
- Anthony Woodford Racing. “AWR Engine Mounts.” (May 21, 2013) http://www.awrracing.com/awr-engine-mounts/
- Berg, Phil. “10 Bolt-On Auto Performance Upgrades That Work.” Popular Mechanics. (May 13, 2012) http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/how-to/products/10-bolt-on-auto-performance-upgrades-that-really-work-9#slide-9
- Freudenberger, Bob. “Replacing Loose Motor Mounts.” Popular Mechanics. March 29, 2006. (May 21, 2013) http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/how-to/1272571
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