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9000 Motor Mounts
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Posted by JasonS (more from JasonS) on Sun, 14 Jul 2002 13:43:52 Share Post by Email
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( this is the boiler plate for the "how-to" I'll be posting on my website for replacing the motor and transmission mounts on a 97 9000 Aero )

( oh and its along post, so if it strains your brain to read this much, go away.. never did see the point of tagging a message as long )

Of mounts and such

MY 97 Aero has 75k on it, and the upper motor mounts were significantly torn. After reading reams of info on here and a few other Saab sites, I decided to replace the whole lot of them. I bought the hyd units a couple of months ago and last week finally got the upper inserts, the trans bushing and the tool with which to do the uppers.

I started in earnest at about noon and had the uppers done in a couple of hours, but that included getting the car on jack stands and doing some of the prep work for access to the lowers. Having used the tool, I cannot imagine even trying it with out such. I’ll have all this documented on the website eventually, but unless you are good with a lathe and can build you own tool, just go buy this one.

Once the uppers were done, the dog-bone was left out, and the job of getting at the front lower started. This requires loosening the sub frame in order to get enough clearance to get the mount rotated and then pulled out through the wheel well side. A wood block and floor jack was used to get vertical enhancement of the engine. An engine lift is the right way to do this, but that is a tool I’ve yet to acquire.

Someone has said that if the uppers are gone, you can be sure the lowers need replacing. In my case both the lowers showed no physical sign of wear. However, the driving says that they were certainly not 100%. It would be interesting to know how the lowers deteriorate and what their stages of failure over time are.

The front lower is the real pisser to get to. It requires dropping the sub frame underneath the mount and extending across the front sub frame and back towards the rear. This requires also dropping several of the trim pieces and the rear of the air dam. The biggest PITA in the process is the fastener system used on the air dam and trim. The backing nut is pressed into the plastic, using four prongs that penetrate and grip. The problem comes when the screws freeze up in the nut. Even with liberal anti seize the backing nut spins too easily, cut the plastic and there you are.. very poor system. Even when you can get at the backing nut with pliers etc, the backing nut has little to nothing to offer in the way of betting a purchase to prevent spinning. Isn’t it the case that some stupid little unconnected screw takes more time than any other component (except one, read on).

This car had an altercation with a parking curb or other hard spot. The air dam was broken on the under side, many of the fasteners were missing and the slot/tab arrangement seems to have been ignored when it was slapped back together. I don’t; see how the dealer missed all this, as they had the same view of it as I did when the changed out the belt and pulleys prior to me getting the car. (shame shame – but that is another story to be read on my website..)

Once the orientation of the air dam and sub-frame was figured out, it was a matter of dropping the sub-frame, and raising the engine to get the clearance to remove the front. The rear was a cinch compared to the front, however this is one place where two set of hands is real help to access the nuts holding down the mount, but once the nuts are clear the mount just rotates and slips out towards the exhaust. The engine was lowered back down on to the mounts and all was well.

The transmission mount in the later 9000’s can be done without removing the driver side wheel or the inner liner from that side. However, it requires a tedious process of using a box wrench to slowly, 1/8th of a turn at a time. Add to this that they threaded the aluminum block with the same bolt, means that backing this bolt out goes hard the whole way. I would estimate that there is no time to be saved by disassembling the road side for access that way. This rear bolt took at least 30 minutes in and out and there is no room to get a ratchet in there.

The transmission mount also showed no sign of wear, so perhaps it didn’t need to be replaced at all. Yet, if the average age of a trans mount is 150k, this one must be tired in some way, so again the question is how does one of these die? Does it die from the insde out, such that you only see damage once it is well advanced? My experience in the plastics and rubber industry makes me think one would see the some evidence of rubber failure

Anyone want to buy some slightly used lower mounts? J


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