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I changed the driver's side on my 1993 last weekend. I saw all of the posts on this subject last week AFTER I went through the whole thing, but didn't get a chance to read them all before they disappeared.
I'm a beginner at this stuff. Still, I thought this would take me about an hour, alone, to do. It ended up taking me 4 hours, with someone else's help! First, I couldn't, for the life of me, loosen the three nuts on the bottom part of the mount. I ended up taking the handle off of my jack and using it over the ratchet for leverage. That worked, but even this took lots of strength (I was sore for 2 days). Second, I made some kind of mistake in the order of things - I don't remember exactly (I guess I tried blocking it out of my head!), but I do remember the engine dropping suddenly and tearing the old mount in half! I welcome everyone to laugh at me right now. I think I removed the upper 3 bolts before the engine was properly supported. What an idiot! I used a 2x4 under the oilpan (in the center - nothing happened to the pan, as far as I know) to jack the engine up. This was the scariest part, because I didn't know how far I could jack the engine up without breaking something else, or putting too much weight on the other side, compressing that side's mount. I took the entire mount out - both the top and bottom brackets (so, 3 bolts on top, 3 nuts on bottom). Removed the mount from the brackets, without a vice - just my foot to hold it down. That wasn't too hard. Attached the new one, and inserted the entire unit - rubber mount and both brackets. I tightened the nuts on the bottom to hold the thing down. It turned out I had to jack the engine up more to sort of line the upper bracket to the engine block holes. This is where the second person really came in handy - one person operated the jack, the other watched the holes line up. We removed the belly (splash) pan for better visibility (and for better access to the upper 3 bolts later on). We had the raise and lower the engine several times to get the engine to a point where we could get the bolts in. I hated this, because my jack (and I guess all other floor jacks?) doesn't lower smoothly as you release. So, we went through several cycles of jacking up smoothly but too much, and then trying to lower a little but having the engine DROP too low. (Man, I hate that dropping - very scary). Finally got the holes lined up so I could put the 3 upper bolts in, though it was still a tight fit. Once they were in somewhat, I lowered the engine and tightened the 3 upper bolts and the 3 nuts on the bottom bracket.
Everything seems fine so far, after one week of driving, but if I screwed something up, I take total responsibility for it. I just want to learn from it. Please, anyone who can make some comments on what I did that can help me in the future, or help anyone else - please do so.
Harry
1993 240
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