I haven't been reading in a while, so maybe this has come up recently...I was so surprised by it I figured it might be news to somebody, so here goes...

I have put IPD sway bars, bilstein shocks, all new suspension bushings (all of them!), and I have decent tires on the car. Even after all that work, I was never totally happy with the way the car handled. I didn't expect it to handle like my VW cabriolet (with gobs of suspension mods), but I had hoped for something respectable. What I have been living with for about a year was a wagon that handled pretty well, especially in long steady turns...But the car was pretty poor (unpredictable, often) in the transient part of a turn...

It felt like I was driving around with 500 lbs of weight in the ass end. I'd hit a turn, the whole car would sloppily over-yaw, and then settle back...After that it seemed to do pretty well so long as you didn't try to change the "set"...


Well, my lazy arse finally decided to replace the front motor mounts (which I had purchased about a year ago). The job really wasn't that bad (I had been expecting far worse). Both mounts were completely separated. They were still "there" (ie supporting the engine) but they didn't hold the engine in place during side to side forces (such as cornering)....

(Maybe I should have known that the mounts were fried before, but I honestly had no idea they had failed. I was replacing them simply as a preventative maintenance)

I replaced them, and to my delight the car snaps right into the turns like a champ. I'm quite impressed with the improvement.

(Replacing the mounts also fixed my U-joint slamming noise during power-on hard turns...duh.)

-Steve