Nissan Patrol 4x4 (Africa)

Good day all

Whilst looking for a rather irritating rattling noise I discovered that my engine mounts are torn and on their way out. So I decided to swap the engine and transmission mounts out myself and ordered the parts from Terrain Tamer.

What I found is: The engine mount on the passenger side is pretty easy to get to if you remove airfilter housing and heat shields around exhaust manifold. The driver side requires more contortionism and use of powerful words. Unless you remove a whole bunch of stuff like water pipes etc. I wasn't prepared to do that so I went for the knuckle busting swearing profusely method. Lifting the engine to get the mounts out when loose did not work. I had to remove the brackets that attach to the engine block. Not that hard to do whilst the the engine is supported. The bracket and mount can then be wiggled out and back in with the new mount. Getting the bolts back into the engine block is a bit more tricky and requires some up and down jiggling of the engine.

So with engine mounts done I started with the transmission mounts. In a perfect world this is pretty easy job. If you support the transmission the crossmember can be dropped far enough to remove the mounts. The mounting bolts are long enough to lower it without removing completely. Unfortunately my world is far from perfect. I'm not sure if it is a design flaw on Nissan's side or whether my troll went for a seaside swim in a past life, but I discovered some nasty rust between the crossmember and chassis. Obviously moisture trapped between the crossmember and chassis and could not get out. Two of four mounting bolts on driver side snapped off. You can see in the pics how far gone they were rusted. I won't go into the details around getting these out of the chassis because I've tried to block the event from my mind. The worrying bit is that you can't see the damage. Looking at the chassis and crossmember there is no sign of serious rust from the outside all looks OK. In the end I'm glad I went through the ordeal, otherwise the rust would have gotten much worse and eventually resulted in something pretty nasty.

Thanks for the good information . Been thinking about doing my mounts also. Would be nice to know how you handled your snapped bolts as im super scared of that happening

Jonathan.... even though this was a mentally painful experience and one shouldn't laugh at another mans pain..... I had to laugh a little .... well written post, and happy you got it out and sorted.

I can recommend a therapist if you can unblock the trauma on getting those stuck snapped bolts out and telling us how you did it...... .... I can only imaging the creative monologue you had while doing this job....

Wd40 or q20 is your friend foe a week or so before you try to change those bad boys ...thanks for thw heads up

and probably a bit of direct heat ..... very carefully

ricster wrote: ↑25 Nov 2019 12:09 Jonathan.... even though this was a mentally painful experience and one shouldn't laugh at another mans pain..... I had to laugh a little .... well written post, and happy you got it out and sorted.

I can recommend a therapist if you can unblock the trauma on getting those stuck snapped bolts out and telling us how you did it...... .... I can only imaging the creative monologue you had while doing this job....

Cedric definetely PG18 for profanity! I have two different types of stud removal tools and both proved useless. Luckily the two that broke off was on the outer side, of which you can reach from the top as well. The inner two go into the chassis so you can only reach them from the bottom. In the end I drilled them out because I reckoned if I do bugger up the thread I can at least still gooi a nut on from the top. And I reckoned welding a nut on is probably not going to work because the piece of bolt that was left did not have much meat on it and would probably only break off again anyway. But that was an option. Luckily I manage to drill a large enough cavity into them with damaging the thread too much and then gently persuaded the remaining piece out with a punch and hammer.

Tinus lotz wrote: ↑25 Nov 2019 12:42 Wd40 or q20 is your friend foe a week or so before you try to change those bad boys ...thanks for thw heads up

Het dit probeer Tinus maar die twee aan die binnekant kan jy net van onder af bykom, so al wat jy kan Q20 spuit is die koppe. Op die ander twee was hulle net te vas geroes, nie eers die penetrating lube kon penetrate nie

Ahhh... Thank man..... oh by the way, a deal is a deal. You told us how you did it so here is my therapists number...... 082 double four bottle store !!!

ricster wrote: ↑25 Nov 2019 14:27 Ahhh... Thank man..... oh by the way, a deal is a deal. You told us how you did it so here is my therapists number...... 082 double four bottle store !!!

Thanks Cedric but it turns out we have the same therapist! Had a session with her on Saturday evining

And how did that make you feel?.....

ricster wrote: ↑25 Nov 2019 15:03 And how did that make you feel?.....

At first I was euphoric and excited, then very happy. Later I was confused by what she was trying to tell me and I felt a bit stupid and sad. In the end I regretted meeting her