Acceptable movement or front motor mount shot?

[Mike]

I get a single light knock/tap when accelerating from a dead stop. I shot this brief video of reving the engine in gear to check the front lower engine mount. (The dogbone looks just fine. I removed it and inspected it in my hand.) Does this amount of movement seem acceptable or do you think that front mount is shot?

[video type=youtube]f_rHxO7zG84[/video]

Topic

[college man]

Thats looks like quite a bit of movement. I would
inspect the motor mounts.

[Ingvar]

Looks like everyone mentions the dog bone mount for that year and motor.

This should be helpful:

http://www.justanswer.com/toyota/7vtfu-change-motor-mounts-2002-toyota-hihhla.html

[Mike]

Removed dogbone; it’s perfectly intact. No tears at all in the rubber. I’m leaning heavily toward the bottom mount in the front. Apparently that’s the main one that absorbs the acceleration torque in this engine and is the first to fail. But I wish I knew for sure. The cheapest I can find a new OEM front mount for is about $140 shipped! I may pay a shop to diagnose them all for me on a rack just to be sure.

[EricTheCarGuy]

I didn’t hear any noise in the video. For brake torquing the engine, that doesn’t look THAT excessive. Perhaps there is some other issue causing the noise. Information on how to find the source of noises can be found here.

http://www.ericthecarguy.com/faq/diagnosing-noises-in-your-car

Good luck and keep us posted.

[Mike]

The noise is only when you accelerate from a dead stop. When I stand on the brake like that it doesn’t happen. It sounds like someone taps the back of the dash with a wiffle ball bat.

I’m probably going to get a shop to check it out because I can’t find any unusual play anywhere and I’ve checked a couple of times. I also removed the stereo to make sure nothing was obviously loose in the dash and the noise definitely seems to come from the engine compartment when I have that kind of access. (Harder to tell with it all assembled.)

Edit: Thanks for the reply, Eric!

[Mike]

Acceptable movement.

[Mike]

Thanks for all the replies, everyone. The problem is fixed!

There’s a support bracket that goes from the top left of the intake manifold to the block on the bottom. The bottom bolt was loose, causing the noise (since the top bolt was missing since god knows when.) With a new top bolt and the bottom bolt tightened down, the clunk is gone and what’s left of my sanity has returned.

[EricTheCarGuy]

Nice! That sounds like an easy inexpensive fix. Those are always the best. Thanks for keeping us updated and for using the ETCG forum.

[Mike]

Thanks for making the forum available to us. It’s saved a lot of us a ton of money!

I splurged and spend $2.15 for the bolt from the Toyota dealer (and had to make a second trip since it wasn’t in stock and had to be special-ordered. Just my luck.) I didn’t want to risk using the wrong size or thread pitch tightening directly into the intake!

[Author]

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