[Varinn]

Installed my VT mounts last night and it's a very easy job. No fancy tools needed and took max 3 hours on the floor in the garage. I took approximately zero pictures, so this is a bit wordy.

Get jackstands under the car and make sure it's up on high on the forward lift points. Remove the 3 screws from the belly pan to the torque plate. Take out the 4 bolts on the smaller rear pan, then the 8 larger ones and remove the torque plate. You'll have plenty of access now so remove the two lower nuts from the existing motor mounts. I used a 3/8" ratchet, a 4" extension with a wobble head and 16mm deep socket.

Go up top and pull out the Intake from the airbox to the boot. You'll have a MAF connection, a vacuum line, and a hose clamp on the plenum. Wiggle it out past the coolant overflow line.

I used a 3/8" ratchet with an 18" extension tipped with a universal and 16mm deep socket. Undo and remove the top nut on each mount.

Floorjack under the car I used a 10" 2x4 block placed on end. I found there was a nice spot near the stainless braided oil line that I could sit it against the sealing flange where the bolts are. I picked this spot because I was lifting against solid metal versus an open reservoir on the base of the pan. Lift the motor slow, check for interference or anything sketchy about your high tech wood block's positioning.

Go up until you are able to lift the exhaust side mount upwards to clear the bottom stud, then just rotate it and pull it down and out. Swap in the new mount and heat shield, lift it upwards and place the washer and nut on the stud. Thread only a couple turns. I did all of this side from below.

Move to intake side, same process except you work from above. You might have to raise a bit higher, my plenum was just a C-hair from touching the stock brace when it cleared. Pop in the new mount, thread on a couple turns etc.

Bottom studs line up with the holes and keep themselves in place? Good. If not drop the motor CAREFULLY a few mm at a time until they do. Once they're semi-self aligning by being in the holes then you can go ahead and lower the motor down slowly until they are no longer hanging from the top nut. Spin the mounts to engage the pins and stop them from rotating, then lower it completely.

Back underneath! VT sells the mounts with serated flange 15mm nuts on the bottom. These are good, loctite makes them better. I put some blue on and torqued the bottom nuts 42NM. Move up top, same thing but torque to 42NM, in my case no loctite required as they provided separate washers with 17mm nyloc nuts.

Re-install your intake assembly, be sure to check that the plenum-elbow gasket is seated properly.

Re-install your torque plate. Much easier to thread everything in by hand first, then grab your torque wrench and starting with the inner 4 in a criss-cross pattern torque them all up to 59NM, then the outer 4 in the same pattern. They all need to be finished with a final 90 degrees.

Install the smaller rear plate, take the car off the stands and test.




I found a massive improvement in the way it drives. Zero extra NVH, significantly smoother 2nd gear (Into or out of). It still has that springy dual mass flywheel feeling to it, but it no longer has a tendancy to dance around on/off throttle, it doesn't slam and clunk into gears on a lazy low rpm 1-2 shift or grind on a hard 1-2. Definite improvement over the oem mounts.

Tools used:
1/2" breaker bar or large ratchet (18"-24" handle is perfect)
1/2" 17mm socket for the torque plate bolts (Might have been 16mm, can't remember)
1/2" torque wrench
3/8" ratchet, I used a tiny stubby one and a 10"
3/8" wobble-plus extensions (18", 4", and 1")
3/8" universal
3/8" 8mm, 13mm, 15mm, 16mm, and 17mm sockets
3/8" torque wrench
flat head screwdriver