Aircooled VW engine mount bolts 

I'm glad you liked it, thanks! Yeah, I've seen written explanations and occasionally diagrams, but I'd never seen anything that showed all four mountings in context, so that's what I was attempting. Thanks for watching!

Wonderful! I'm so glad. Yeah, it's hard to see them on the car. Having removed and installed the engine in my VW a few times, and mostly doing it by feel, I wanted to make this to help people do it. What kind of VW do you have? Were you removing/installing the engine, or the starter, or what? Thanks for watching.

Thanks! I try to make the kind of videos that I would have found useful when I was first working on that car 15 years ago.

You're welcome, thanks! (For others who may read this comment:) Yep! It's studs and nuts on the lower two, bolts and nuts on the upper two....except that the nut on the upper left is pressed into the engine bell housing and so is hidden.

Thanks! I kinda liked this one. It helps me work on stuff when I can refer to things like this that show me where things are and how they go together.

You're very welcome. I hope it's helpful. I try to make videos that would have been helpful to me when I first was working on the car many years ago.

Thanks very much! Yes, I was very pleased about how this one came out.

You're welcome, thanks for commenting! I have lots of other videos, please check them out.

That's fantastic to hear! So it was a bolt with a hex head under the car, and a nut on the engine side? That's super-cool! I'm so glad it helped.

@@fsodn My '70 bug has a tapped thread in the engine case and a hex head bolt through the transmission side, like in your video

@@tompearson8364 Does your engine have the dog house oil cooler shroud? In other words, can you reach where the nut would be on the car with the engine in? Thanks for the info.

The engine has an older style oil cooler so there is space to get a wrench behind it. However, the case is from a newer model that had the doghouse

You're very welcome. I kind of liked this one. I find it's hard to get a feel for how something is arranged or how it goes together if you can only see parts of it at a time. I had the opportunity with my engine out, and the junk transmission to show the bolts in a way that you can actually see how it goes together with reasonable lighting. I have several other VW videos on my channel, feel free to check them out! I also have many more on the way as I get my 1972 SuperBeetle back on the road. I just got the right front spindle off the shock tower which I'll have up as a new video in a few weeks.

You're very welcome! Yes, I shot this video because it's the sort of thing I wished I'd had when I pulled the engine in my VW the first time.

I suspect they did originally have washers, yes. The new engine mount hardware set I have in the garage as a spare has a wavy washer for each nut. I presume they're mainly to protect the engine and transmission bell housings from scoring as the nuts get tightened. Having said that, my 1972 Super in the time that I've owned it never had washers anywhere in the engine mounting hardware, just the nuts. I haven't bothered adding any.

Hi, The engine mount hardware is important enough that if I were you, I'd try to buy them specifically made for that purpose. In any case, I'm not sure you can get the extra-long bolt with the D-shaped head anywhere except a VW supplier. The part number for the hardware install kit is 111199000A (for 1971 and later VWs). It's available at Wolfsburgwest.com for $6.76 right now. That indludes the long D-head bolt, the other bolt for the other upper mount, three nuts, and washers. To answer your specific question, I just got out my spare kit. They seem to be M10 bolts/nuts by 1.5 threads. But again, if you're actually going to hang an engine with them and drive the car, I'd just order the real thing and be done.

@@fsodn .Thanks ! this is alot of help .ill order them. also do you have any idea what bolts/ nut size for the bracket that holds the cable clutch to the trans axle? I have a sedan trans that's missing one bolt and i have no nut for the bolt thats there. Id like to save 15 trips to the hard wear store while trying to guess metric sizes.Thanks for replying !

I don't know, and I'm not with my VW stuff at the moment. If you don't have one, I would go on thesamba.com and create an account. It's a great community and there are folks there with a ton of knowledge. I would ask your question there. I'm sure there's someone who knows.

FYI: metric bolts are sized by their outer diameter in millimeters. If you don't have one, I would pick up a cheap calipers. Measure the outer diameter of the bolt (including threads) and the "M" size is the number of millimeters that are slightly higher than that. The engine mount bolts were just slightly less than 10 mm in diameter, thus M10. For any given M size, there will usually be two thread numbers, one "fine", and one "coarse". In metric the number is the distance between the threads in mm, so the higher then number, the coarser the thread. Here's a thread they have on bolt threads: www.thesamba.com/vw/forum/viewtopic.php?t=313722

I think you're saying that you're trying to remove the engine from an air-cooled VW, and there's a problem with your upper left engine mount bolt, is that right? The answer depends on whether it's a "dog house oil cooler" engine or not. If you reach in front of the fan shroud on your engine toward the engine mount bolt, but you can't get to it because the oil cooler and it's piping are in the way, then you have a dog house oil cooler. If you can see the upper left engine mount bolt looking in there, and touch the engine block from that side by reading past the fan shroud, then you don't have a dog house oil cooler. If you have a dog house oil cooler like mine, then here's your answer. With a dog house oil cooler, part of the hole on the engine side is threaded. If you don't have a dog house oil cooler, then I think the hole probably isn't threaded, but I don't honestly know; I've never worked on one of those cars. Either way, if the head is broken off of the upper left mount bolt, you may be able to get the engine out anyway. You can just pull the engine back, and the headless bolt will slide out of the transmission. If you don't have someone local to talk to, though, your best bet is to go onto the site thesamba.com. It's a a site with a ton of forums, all on air-cooled VWs. There are many experts there that can help you and they'll know how to deal with your problem. Good luck!

No, there isn't. I mention at 1:25 in the video that the engine mounts rigidly to the transmission, but the transmission attaches to the frame by three flexible mounts that serves to cushion the vibrations from the engine/transmission assembly from the body. The engine tin is close to the body all the way around the engine bay but it's not mounted to the frame there. As far as the rear sheet metal of the car is concerned, the engine floats there. All its weight is on the transmission. Does that help?

The transmission is like 20 pounds, less since that particular transmission is missing about 60% of its innards. I could hold it up with one arm if I had to. My feet are in no danger. I don't have a metal shop. This is my garage. I'll use a claw hammer in it if I damned well please. I've done way stupider stuff on my channel than lift a transmission in stocking feet, or use the wrong hammer. I have a video about using a ball joint separator tool to extract some rubber suspension bushings. I recommend that video; it's really scandalous! Really, I'd check out all my videos to catalog the dumb things I do. There are admittedly a lot. I used a drill on a gas tank; it's pretty awesome.

Thanks for the comment. Mixing it up is easy to do, yes. People often refer to the "rear main seal" in a VW engine, which is on the flywheel end of the crankshaft (and thus is the *forward* end of the engine). However, I don't believe I made any right/left mistakes here; I just watched the video again to check. I always refer to the *right* upper mount as the one that shares a bolt with the starter, and the *left* upper mount bolt as the one into the captive nut by the oil cooler. And I don't refer to the lower studs by left or right at all. If you think I mixed something up, please give me a time stamp where the mistake is. There is a standard. Maybe not invented by him, but John Muir (who wrote _How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive_) uses a very strong convention in that book. He uses "right" meaning the right of the vehicle, that is, standing behind it and looking at the part as it sits in the car, and left likewise, and front is toward the front of the vehicle, and rear toward the rear. So the starter is at the upper right of the engine. The generator is right of center. The oil cooler is on the left side of center. The belt pulley is at the rear of the engine, and the flywheel is at the front of the engine.

@@fsodn It could very possibly have been myself that was confused LOL To avoid confusion years ago, sailors invented specific language such as forward-aft-port-starboard. Obviously the issue with VWs is due to an engine in the back and then compounded by the engine being “backwards”! The main rear seal is in the front SAY WHAT???

Yep. All very well said. Thanks for the response! Because of the confusion you talked about, I was very careful about left vs. right in this video. However, I admittedly was not especially careful about camera angles, because I was concentrating on getting good lighting and clear camera shots of the bolts/nuts, rather than a consistent viewpoint. So that was a bit confusing if you're not used to looking at VW engine/transmissions.

@@fsodn thanks, I imagine it’s not easy. Keep it up.

Thanks a lot! Please subscribe, and tell your friends. I've done a *ton* of work on my Beetle since late May, and I have film of most of it. I'll be posting lots more videos about it this summer and fall.