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Engine and Gear Mounts - Original or Aftermarket


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Hi,

 

My Cherokee XJ engine and g Iear mounts are all worn out. I need to get them replaced. I use this vehicle for offroading. Does anyone have any other experience with aftermarket ones vs the original? Also, I gather that you get the mounts in 2 types, rubber and polyurethane? Which one is better?

 

The safest option would be to go for the original. But I was thinking of getting something more heavy duty by importing it as I have seen the cost of importing heavy duty mounts are almost the same as buying the original locally.

 

Please advise.

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Rubber is softer and prone to drying out and cracking. 

Polyurethane is a lot tougher and should last the life of the vehicle. 

The trade off is that rubber is better at absorbing vibrations and noises. The polyurethane ones will transfer more noise and vibration to the car. It’s not going be be a huge amount but if you’re used to rubber, you’ll notice it. It’s just something you’ll have to decide yourself.

For suspension bushes I’d recommend poly, for motor mounts, rubber. The only time I would consider poly motor mounts is in a modified engine with high horsepower.

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thanks for the feedback guys. Will be going with rubber mounts for sure.

Any experience on the rubber mounting from a company called Crown? They are costing AED 160 x 2 for the engine mounts, and AED 190 for the transmission mounts. Mopar is costing AED 300 x 2 for the engine mount and AED 400 for the transmission mounts.

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Go with original mounts, as you don't change them often and they should be good for next 4-5 years. Why take chance for half the amount, every time I trust un-heard brand I regret later.

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Let's root for each other & watch each other grow.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Just an update on the post. I went ahead with the aftermarket Crown Mounts for both the motor as well as the transmission. I could immediately feel the difference in terms of the immediate torque (on new mounts) vs delayed torque (on worn out engine mounts). Crown has been manufacturing the rubber mounts for Jeep vehicles for the past 40 years so they do come with some reputation.

However in my first desert drive, I hit a cross track while climbing up a dune and heard a loud metal noise. On inspection I found that my clutch fan had kissed the radiator causing it to leak.

After checking the car at the garage we found that the rubber on the Crown mounts were softer than the original mounts which caused more flexing and allowing the clutch fan to touch the radiator under some severe offroading conditions

The strange thing is this never happened when I was running on completely worn out motor mounts. Possibly because the the engine had sagged back closer to the firewall.

I changed the mounts to the original  but also needed to increase the space between th clutch fan and the radiator so that this doesn't  repeats. One options was to change the 4 core radiator to the original 2 core radiator which is slightly thinner and thus creating more gap between itself and the clutch fan. Other option was to remove the clutch fan and replace it with an electric fan.

In the first choice it would have caused heating issues especially with upcoming Summer months. Fo the second option, I had read a lot that at higher rpm the clutch fan gives better flow rate than an electric fan plus for some people a clutch fan is more reliable than an electric one.

So I researched and found a third option which was to push the radiator closer to the front grill by half an inch. This was done by making additional holes on the frame in which the radiator sits. Also I had to change the condenser piping a bit.

Taken the car for a couple of drives and have had no issues so far.

Hard lesson learnt.

Thanks @Gaurav and @shadow79 for the suggestions and inputs to help find a solution.

 

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Same old jeep problem like I mentioned in one of my earlier posts. You change or upgrade one thing and then you have you fiddle with a 100 more things to get the first one to work right.

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