I tackle this task also a few weeks ago. It was not fun at all. But so far it has payed off.
I also added headers and y-pipe and have not heard it hit my floorboard once. I live on a brick street and we have tons of train tracks all around our town.
My car has 32,000 miles on it and on one of the old motor mounts it was starting to tear.
while doing my motor mount swap i figured out an easier way to get this serious PITA job done in such a way that you don't have to have two people prying on the motor.
after you take the stock mounts off and get the new poly's in the clam shell you will need to remove one of the pedestals, i think the driver's side is easier:
1)you will need to take the bolts that hold the pedestal to the K-member to home depot and get some new bolts that are the same thread pattern, except the bolts need to be about 7-8 inches long.
2)bolt the clamshells to the motor.
3)on the side that still has the pedestal attached: connect the clemshell to the pedestal (this can still be a pain to line up, but you only have to do it on this side.
4)with that side done, move over to the other side that has the pedestal removed.
5)connect the pedestal to the clamshell, now the pedestal should be hanging and it looks almost impossible to connect it to the k-member, wrong.
6)take the longer bolts you bought from home depot and run them through the pedestal to the holes in the k-member, this will maintain the pedestals allignment, but as you notice the pedestal is still inches from the k-member.
7)take a large c-clamp and tighten it down so one side is on the underside of the k-member, and the other is on the inner base of the pedestal and start clamping down.
8)as you tighten on the c-clamp it will bring the pedestal closer to the k-member. while you are tightening you will need to lower the motor a little each time if you have it resting on a jack stand.
9)when you get the pedestal close enough to put one of the original bolts through, pull the longer one out and replace it with the original and you can begin torquing down on those to bring the pedestal closer until you have all the original bolts in place.
DO NOT TRY THIS WITH THE ORIGINAL BOLTS!!! THEY ARE NOT LONG ENOUGH AND YOU WILL STRIP THEM ALONG WITH THE HOLES IN THE K-MEMBER!!! ASK ME HOW I KNOW
__________________ white 98 trans am-k&n fipk, coolant by-pass, full exhaust, eibach prokit, kyb shocks, UMI STB, SFCs, LCAs, PHB; poly m/m
I like the method I used to get the 2nd bolt through. Sharpen the end of the bolt and then use an air hammer to pound it through. If you can get the holes to overlap at all, then this should work. I know there is not a lot of room to swing a hammer in there, so let air do the work. =)
P.S. air hammers are cheap from harbor freight and they assist in getting rivets off too.
__________________ 2001 Camaro SS M6...
Pacesetters, TSP True Duals (extended out back), Slp Air Lid, tune by Frost...
Plus some other stuff
I need a lil help. I have the driver's side in fine. But can NOT get the passenger side to line up.
Im doing this with headers on and all I have is a 12" prybar.
Where the hell do you guys stick the prybar to move the engine?
I have done this with the passenger header still in place, but never with both. Also, when reinstalling the long Motor Mount bolts, I would get the Passenger side in first and then loosen the 4 bolts that hold the Motor Mount Pedestal to the K-Member on the Drivers side. This will give you a little more play and hopefully allow you to line the holes up enough to slam the other long bolt through.
I guess you have a couple of options...
You could simply loosen the 4 bolts on the Passenger side Pedestal to see if that will allow you to line up the Pedestal with the Clamshell Assembly.
If that doesn't work, I would remove the Driver side long bolt. Line up the Passenger side and get that long bolt installed. Then proceed to loosen the Pedestal bolts on the Driver side and see if you have more luck wrestling this side into place.
I don't know how you got this far without removing the headers. (Probably alot of swearing. LOL) There isn't a Hell of allota room in there with them out, so you must be really constrained by leaving them in place.
If you still can't get the bolt through after trying these two methods, I would definitely consider removing at least the driver side header. I know that sucks, but it may be your last resort. Good luck, man.
I finally got the mother F***ers in. I had the drivers bolt in halfway and was working to get the passenger in.
got a 36 in prybar from ace. had a slight curve on the bottom. Stood at the front of my car and stuck it down in front of the headers(i removed the AC dryer/condenser WhateverTF it is) and stuck it in between the pedestal and mount and HEAVED that bitch up.
my nephew pushed the bolt in and I proceed to beat the living daylights out of each bolt till they both got through.
would have completed it all tonight .. but had school. I will work on it later but for now. . . its off to Knoxville for a Lamb of God concert as a reward for the MOST PITA job on an F-body EVER!
probably the hardist thing i ever done besides that valve spring swap getting those back 2 in the rear. i just changed the drivers side poly where the torqe is and havent had a bit of problem. i have arh headers and that passenger side looked impossible. so i said pass.. maybe it has a little give to cut down on vibes to . been on the track to and no problems.. any body else tried this one mount drivers side let it be heard please........
What a pain in the a$$! I started this little project last Monday. My car is not a DD so I can work on it when I feel like it. So far I have about 8 hours into this. The pass. side came out pretty easy (a.c. has been out of my car for a few years), but all my trouble has been driver side. I unbolted the alt. but didn't touch the exhaust. I live in Calif. so I'm not going to bother with headers because I really don't feel like changing that every 2 years for smog...call me lazy! My first problem with the drivers side was breaking loose the clamshell bolts off the engine. Those suckers were on there tight! Taking apart the clamshells and bolting them back together with the new Prothane bushings was easy. Again for the most part pass. side went together 'fairly' easy. On to the drivers side and for whatever reason I couldn't start the top rear bolt on the engine/clamshell. I tryed different hand positions, lying under the car different, trying different bolt combinations (leaving 2 bolts in, leave 1 bolt in, etc...), nothing worked! I took the clamshell back out and started a bolt in the block to make sure the threads were ok. They were. I finally just gave up. Didn't touch the car Fri. and all day Saturday until about 10 at night. Being that it was late I thought I would go out and mess around a few minutes then go to bed. As I'm trying the different position thing again the bulb in my flood light dies so now the only light I have is the fluorescent ceiling lights! I keep going because I know I don't have another bulb and there is still some light under the car. And by some grace of God...or something...the bolt starts threading into the hole!!! But wait...its not over! Whatever anti-thread demon exists moved from the engine down to the k-member because now I can't start 2 of the pedistal mount bolts! This after I had threaded those bolts in numerous times. After playing with the pedestal I finally get those in. All the bolts are in but loose. Its about this time I remembered what everybody here has said about the effort it takes to get the big bolts in. I'm hoping that because I have eveything loose this won't be hard. Driver side goes in first with not much effort...I then go over to the pass. side and lower the jack, move the pedestal/clamshell around a little bit...VICTORY!!!! So now picture this...I'm lying under the car (with not much light) staring up at my engine and I start to laugh like a mad scientist...weird. It took me an hour and a half to get that far. After that a called it a night. In addition to finishing up the engine mounts, I still have the torque arm bushing, rear LCAs and lowering brackets to do. I may just leave the brackets off for now. Oh yeah, I also busted a caster wheel off my creeper after I threaded in that engine bolt.
Sure its a PITA... But its not as bad as some people think especially when you already got the exhaust manifolds off and just doing the mounts. Lucky for me I did it when I purchase Headers so I saved myself the trouble from swearing to it.. LOL... I did the driver side first the the passenger side some people take both off, others just do it one by one. It's not that hard...!! just time consuming for sure.
__________________ 2002 Camaro SS LE#456 SLP#1586M6,SLP Maff,CAI,Stock ehaust,18's BFG G-Force Sport
I just did this this past weekend. It was not as bad as I thought it would be reading through these posts. I had a spare set of motor mounts, so I had them glass beaded, painted and assembled, so I had no down time. I had the headers out.(Can't imagine doing this with them in.) Also, I did not need to completely remove the alternator, I just moved it forward and rested it on the sway bar. I did one side at a time, starting on the passenger side. Passenger side went in really easy. It was the driver side that was the real PITA. Nothing was lining up on the driver side. I followed Mumbles advice and loosened the pedestal mount, jacked the motor around and pried on the pedestal to get the back hole to line up, and put the bolt in backwards and hammered away. Success! It took about 8-10 hours total w/ breaks to get this done.
__________________ Bryan Norcross
2002 Camaro SS - Onyx/Ebony - M6 T-Top
2008 Pontiac G8 - White Hot/Onyx - V6 My Fquick
STOCK MONTS
