Grrr. Homemade motor mounts

[Eric Seppanen]

I've been a big fan of homemade motor mounts for a while.  But I think
I've finally had enough.

I've been rallying a Sentra SE-R for a couple of years, and poured my
own motor mounts almost immediately after I bought the car (mcmaster 80
shore A urethane) and they seemed great at first- really nice and hard.
Unfortunately, it's really hard to get the center hole aligned properly,
so I had to fight really hard to get them installed.  Reinstalling the
front-to-rear brace under the engine (where the rearmost mount is
attached) is now a horrible pain, because nothing wants to line up
correctly.

Problem #2 occurred a few rallies later, where I smacked a rock hard
enough to crack the aluminum frame of the passenger side ("front")
mount.  If the mounts weren't quite so hard, it might have flexed enough
to have absorbed the shock without breaking.  I poured a new mount,
convinced that I was still getting quality mounts for less money.

Then came last fall's Ojibwe Forest ProRally.  I failed not one, not
two, but all three weight-bearing mounts.  What seems to have happened
is that the rearmost mount failed because the fresh urethane did not
adhere to the little bit of stock rubber left in the mount, and under
load it started pushing out the side of the mount.  Repeated hammering
from driving the car on stages started to flatten the steel mount and
broke apart the urethane insert.  Now the engine had new freedom to move
and twist, and that moving and twisting failed the other two mounts in
exactly the same way: urethane separating and popping out the side, then
getting hammered to bits.

Still convinced homemade mounts are worthwhile, I decided to try to
remove all the stock rubber from a mount.  6 tiring hours later, I'm
ready to give up: that rubber is just too resilient.  The effort just
isn't worth it. I'm going to give up and buy factory-made urethane motor
mounts.

A bit of constructive criticism here: the archive search function seems
to be rather... unhelpful.  It seems to return mostly pages with none of
the search terms I've entered.  I've spent the latest half hour
searching for various terms, and I can't find a single mention of a
place that sells Energy Suspension mounts.  I'd appreciate anyone who
can point me in the right direction.

Eric