I finally had the chance to start working on my truck again and to fix an annoying oil leak from the front crank seal (which I replaced last year..).

Anyways, when I was unbolting my harmonic balancer bolt, the engine lifted up counter clockwise with the bolt a short distance before the bolt broke loose... I don't remember the engine doing this last year when I took off my harmonic balancer.

I decided to take a look under the truck and noticed some of the bolts to the motor mounts (I believe they are the motor mounts, I'm not 100% sure) were not fully snugged down. I tightened some, but one on the drivers side would not seem to fully seat down.

Anyways, after I got the job done replacing the crank seal and putting on a new water pump, I've noticed a slight clunk sometimes when I drive off from a start. It doesn't always happen, I believe when I let off the clutch too soon, it's more evident.

Could this be a sign of one or more of the motor mounts going bad? I didn't really know what to look for to see if the mounts were messed up or not. They didn't look out of the ordinary to me necessarily, but there was one bolt that wasn't able to fully torque down like I said (probably not a good sign.. I'll see if I can put up pictures after work tomorrow)

If the motor mounts are indeed bad, how would I go about replacing them? I don't have any way to lift the motor besides using a jack, and I won't have tons of time this week to work on my truck either so hopefully it doesn't involve unbolting the tranny or something fun like that. I also didn't completely fix my coolant leak.. I bought a new thermostat housing and coolant is still leaking from there! That is something that can be put on hold for a while though, and shouldn't take too long to fix either..

Anyways enough of my rambling, any advice about the motor mounts would be appreciated. I just want to be safe because if my mounts are going bad, I don't imagine having the motor mounts completely fail would be a great experience.

 

your bronco is lifted right, might be time to go thru and either replace bolts with grade 8 hardware or use an air ratchet to get everything tightened up. if you can post some pictures of the area you saw move that would better help us asses whats necessary.

 

Well I haven't had time the past few days to work on my truck or get pictures due to work and spending time with my girlfriend! However I decided to try and replace the motor mounts this morning. As it turns out, the passenger side mount was fine, but the drivers side mount completely deteriorated. Rubber was falling out and crumbling all over the place when I was trying to wedge the old mount out. I finally got it out, but am taking a quick break! So I'm in the process of now trying to put the new ones in so hopefully it won't be too much of a pain!

 

Well I'm about to take my 12 gauge and blow holes in the engine and call it good!!! Okay maybe not but I'm pretty frustrated with how its going!

I can only get one of the two bolts on each new mount in.... The front passanger side bolt hole in the engine seems like it is cross threaded so I can't screw any bolts into it, and the front drivers side bolt hole won't line up with the mount hole... This is one of the more frustrating things I've done.

I called a shop and they will take a look at it and see if they can do anything. I'll mess around in the next 30 minutes and see if I can get at least one more bolt in, otherwise I will only have the motor mounts halfway bolted on which I assume isn't the best thing in the world, but I need my truck to get to work!

Why can't anything ever be as simple as it sounds?

Edit: My complaining paid off! I got the driver's side motor mount in completely!!!! However, like I said, the passenger side bolt hole is messed up and I don't have anything to tap it with. No matter how hard I try, the bolts will not screw in so hopefully a shop can do something about that and it won't be too expensive!! I believe the bolt on that side was halfway sticking out before and it chewed up the threading, so technically, I haven't had that bolt in for who knows how long!

 

Alright I got everything settled now, my local shop had to re tap the hole and take some stuff off to get to it so it was more money than I wanted, but not too bad.

My motor mounts should be good to go and hopefully won't be needing new ones for quite some time!