How to make DIY polyurethane engine mounts 

Become a Tuning Pro: hpcdmy.co/dr4a Support the channel by shopping through this link: amzn.to/3RIqU0u Motivation: ru-vid.com/show-UCt3YSIPcvJsYbwGCDLNiIKA This is the liquid polyurethane I used: amzn.to/2VPPayY This is the pigment for coloring the polyurethane that I used: amzn.to/36X81ww Watch the follow-up video: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-mBYhdLsQqug.html To skip the intro where I explain everything you need to know about poly mounts go to 4:00 where I start taking out the old ones and pouring new ones in. I am not in any way sponsored, endorsed, supported, etc. by this company. This info is also in the video description but no one reads that apparently :) There's a lot more good options in terms of liquid urethane out there probably, but this one worked really well for me and bonded itself to the metal mount very well.

As someone trained in low pressure (hand) polyurethane injection moulding, I would suggest a silicone gun and getting some empty tubes. You can fill the tubes with the polyurethane, pop a cap on the end, put in the gun, and squeeze any bubbles out. After mixing, if you have a vacuum chamber, it helps to pull a vacuum on the material too. Once air has been pushed out the nozzle end of the tube, you should endevour to keep the tube NOZZLE DOWN, to trap any air near the cap/plunger end, and not in the nozzle (to avoid injecting it). A heatgun can be used on most material to pop air bubbles that rise to the surface, and heat can be used to accelerate the curing process. Polyurethane will take up to 28 days to 100% cure, and it will gradually get harder over a longer period of time, but it depends on the pre-polymer and the crosslink compound used! Bare in mind, a lot of crosslink compounds and pre-polymers are carcinogenic, wear gloves at a bare minimum with the material, but I would advise a respirator. Methyl-Ethyl Ketone (MEK) or Acetone can be used to remove polyurethane too (Even when set), however, i caution against using it on where you want to keep it because it can make material swell over time. --------- Experience: Producing equipment, cables, joints & connectors from polyurethane for offshore marine, military and survey industries, with my mouldings tested to depths of up to 6000m.

Just a quick tip about getting the pin out! If you just focus the flame on the metal pin it gets super hot and then you can use pliers to get it to pull right out from the rubber.

Everyone did this in the nissan community years ago glad to see people still using it with success

how is it holding up?

I did this 20 years ago on my '89 Civic Si. I made the engine mounts solid with 50a polyurethane. The increase in felt harshness and vibration from the engine was tremendous. It was for a race car, so I didn't mind. If you are doing this on a street car, your passengers will hate it. I imagine drilling holes to emulate the shape of the original mounts would have reduced the vibration, but it was a race car, so I just left it in torture mode.

A vacuum-box will help you to get the airbubbles out of the liquid PU! We use it almost every day and the results are absolutely great.

Best to use a degassing chamber (which can be homebuilt) and a large plastic graduated paint tub (Home Depot, Lowes, Menards) as opposed to a paint rolling pan liner. Makes pouring a hell of a lot easier. I've used Smooth-On for several years for many things, from replacement parts mold casting to original castings to fillers, as is here. To make the pour "pretty", get a melamine board instead of cardboard and hot glue the part to it. No run out. No sticking. Easy parting. And if you want a profile to the poly, create it with modeling clay in the bottom of the casing. If your originals had a profile in the rubber, you could even cast it with this poly to place inside the case by simply using talc as the parting agent. You might even be able to extract the pin from the original rubber with a homemade electromagnetic coil to heat the pin but not the rubber. The pin gets hot, the rubber around the pin melts and allows the pin to slip out with a pair of pliers. Then, just slice up the remaining rubber into sections with a coping saw and peel it out. Safer and legal, since burning rubber is both a health danger and illegal in the US. Just be sure to re-temper the pin afterwards. Videos for each of these steps exist on RU-vid - some in multiples.

Quick tip on removing the rubber. If you drill a series of holes around the center it makes for a lot less rubber to burn. Also it allows the flame to penetrate through the bushing rubber. That method has the added effect of directing a lot of the fumes coming off the rubber to move away from the guy holding the torch.

Why am I watching this. I don't even have a car.

It would be a very good Idea to use a Dremel with a cutoff wheel to cut small grooves around the center sleeve and inside the large outer ring to help create a stronger bond to the polyurethane.

A plastic tomato sauce bottle with a pouring tip is a great container that gives much better control of the flow of liquids. The tip allows you to pour into small, precise places, and you just don't get the product spillage seen here. The easiest way to remove old mounts is to burn them on an outdoor wood fired bbq without trying to remove them from the OME bracket. Once all rubber is gone, the outer sleeves of the OME push in mounts can then be cut once with a reciprocal saw & twisted free easily. Plastic bagging or pallet wrap serves as a great release surface to avoid cardboard hang up! Maybe a better way than using cardboard to local centre sleeves is to 12mm chipboard. Three nails will locate the outer rim, then put the centre piece where it needs to be (offset or not offset), and drill a hole through the centre so you can fit a bolt to the chipboard & hold it in place firmly with a nut. Common floor wax is a great release agent I use all the time in fiberglassing along with PVA release, so I'm also keen to try them when i attempt this manufacturing myself.

My Mazdaspeed 3 has three engine mounts: the rear motor mount (down low, between the transmission and the subframe), the passenger motor mount (up high on the left side of the passenger's side of the engine bay, between that side of the engine and the longitudinal frame rail there, and the transmission motor mount, about halfway down the height of the engine, under the battery box). The mounts are designed to run OTS Energy Suspension polyurethane bushings, for easy replacement, if necessary. I will say thins: a major contributing factor of NVH is the orientation/loading of the bushing itself. All of my bushings are in the 80+ duro range, and it does add some vibes, but I'm putting down 385/380 @ the wheels, so the performance boost of having the engine very solidly mounted is worth it to me, especially with an eye toward occasionally tracking. Great vid, BTW.

What you really want to see starts at 6:35..............you are welcome!!!

Brilliant idea , I can't count how many mounts I have bought in the past few years. Track racing is never forgiving . Get a mix up several different hardness and compress it into tubes , hopefully enough of waxing on the inside diameter will allow me to push out the blank so we can be cut to size and shaped on the lathe and mill. Again brilliant idea and many thanks .

I worked in a prototype shop and we had a job to make some custom urethane wheels. We had a metal insert placed in a mold. The insert had areal rough surface making it better for bonding. Plus I believe we had a primer to put on metal to help in bonding, anything you didn't want the urethane to stick to (the outside of the mold) had mold release.

You've really come a long ways since these old times! I appreciate the upgrade in audio and video equipment. Lol.

THANKS!!! Just today I was wondering how I was going to make the bushings for a custom 4-point trailing axle suspension for a 5 ton baja truck...Now I know how!! GREAT JOB!!!

Wow I never thought of chucking up a wire brush in a drill press. That's brilliant.

I replaced my worn out rubber mount with P.V.A. polyvinyl adhesive, used for bonding glazed ceramic and vinyl asbestos tiles.I was impressed by the excellent stiffness and great results.

Reminds me of the quick fix for one of the cars I owned. Punch the center through a hockey puck. Worked better than an OEM replacement. Lasted 100k miles. Was impressed.

I did the same thing , but I used Polyurethane caulk / sealant . About $8 a tube. Probably not as good , plenty of air bubbles? but was very strong also. You have to be extremely accurate in measuring and keeping the inner bushing in place. Otherwise bolting into the car will not work. Nice job!

Thanks for this video. I have a 1996 Riviera with a bad motor mount that is impossible to replace. They simply are not available, and even the used ones from salvage yards are all so old that the rubber is gone. But repairing my motor mount using this method sounds like just the thing I need to do. Thanks again.

If you want to get the air bubbles out, you take your mini torch and pass the flame over it right after you pour it. I was a polymer tech for quite a while. Also, it helps if you heat the mount first as well.

If possible, when removing the original pressed in rubber inner bush, to weaken the pressed in steel mount's press fit in the outer casing, rather than attack it with the hammer and pointed chisel/drift, to collapse it, if there is a gap in the rubber big enough to get a hacksaw blade in you could VERY carefully saw thru the inner sleeve taking care not to saw into the outer part, then it should come out easily. just an idea:-) thanks for the idea and taking the time to post a video, friend!

If you have a thick metal engine mount, you can drill some holes into the thick areas from the area where the rubber was, so there are areas where the polyurethane can hook into, preventing spinning and sliding even further beyond coarse sanding. Also, if you can get just the rubber out, you may be able to coat it in fiberglass (in a manner that allows you to pull the rubber back out) to make a reusable mold.

Wow! Inspirational, and very useful DIY for rare expensive mounts. Thank you for this! Will try making one for my '97 Acura CL 3.0 right side mount.

stack wood under the mount before removing or damaging the rubber. start with the lowest point and use a hammer to imprint the wood. drill the hole for the shaft then stamp the mount surround. insert bolts into the holes in the vertical position, stamp and drill them as well. then remove rubber and insert back into template. then pour mold.

For those talking about compressing the polymer to reduce the size of the air bubbles, you could probably get a similar benefit by just putting the mixed liquid in a vacuum press before pouring. It's similar to what you'd do with any epoxy/composites when you're going to have the final product visible. Putting the mixed epoxy under vacuum removes the air bubbles that make the epoxy visible and potentially less durable

This is so clever! I may do this for my transmission mount which has become hard to find.

Actually contrary to many comments about the "bonded in" nature of the pin and outer ring to the urethane, I believe here what he has suggested, is the best of both worlds. The STOCK RUBBER ones are around Shore 40A to 50A but the Urethane can similarly be purchase to Shore 40A or 50A or 60A or very soft Shore 10A or very much harder in the higher Shore D scale. The comparison is urethane compared to rubber have slightly different absorption of vibration and slightly less stress defection for similar Shore hardness. This has to do with modulus of elasticity. If you pick a urethane similar to the original rubber bushing the stress defection would be similar with a softer, i.e. more energy absorbing, urethane bushing as the urethane has a higher modulus of elasticity and less stress deflection all things equal. As urethane is basically both higher tensile, and compressive strength for a particular hardness its going to absorb more energy so deflection will be less, and the internal stresses will be higher. So the idea of going harder is bad as it increases shock loading with high resulting internal stresses. This leads to reduced life and compression set unless carefully engineered, just like rubber bushings. But urethane is an engineered chemical whereas rubber is made like making a cake from a combination of materials coming together to form a unified whole, heavily dependent on processing the same. Still don't push it if you don't want to crumble your bushings be careful. You may have better engineered material but you don't want push it too far or it will deteriorate just as bad or worse than rubber. The difference is rubber will gradually give up whereas urethane will all of a sudden give up. He is on the right track not to allow sliding movement and accomplish suspension normal deflections with deflection of the urethane like is done with rubber bushes. Auto suspension engineers have a 100 years of experience and mass use to back them up with the bonded in flexible rubber bushes technology. The urethane applied the same way is a change of material not basic design... so the man here is right to build his bushes as he does.

LOL, I have been enjoying your Iconic Engines series and this popped up in my feed. I watched this video when it first came out! You've come a long way.

A standard rubber bushing is designed to flex and twist when needed to, hence why the rubber is attached to the outer ring and the central pin. Doing what you have done, basically fixing it with a solid lump of Polyurethane, will not allow the same degrees of movement and could possibly damage the Poly bushing. What I am trying to say is when you bolt up the centre of the mount it will have no movement, where as a 'Bought' Poly bushing has the pin in the centre removed/not attached so that the bushing can rotate easier. That is what the gaps in the original bushing are for, twisting movement. When you tighten the bolt in the centre of your fixed mounts, it will tighten everything and you will have NO twisting movement and a very short bushing life. When you change a wishbone bushing or whole wishbone, the car should be settled at ride height before tightening the mounts, so that everything is straight and allows for the proper twisting/movement of the bushing. 15 years of Mechanical Engineering has proven this to me many times. If you want to do this properly you need to pour the Poly without the centre pin, then drill out the hole required and grease the pin so it has rotation. Good idea tho, might try it one day :)

Good afternoon, my friend, congratulations for this important tutorial .. I appreciate all the information you can give me to learn how to do that work ..

Amazing guide! You're awesome bro! I'm so glad you went into the details about stiffness and shared the product you used.

Awesome idea for engine mounts. This product would work great on old machines that have components that have deteriorated over time. Great idea!

If you add dye to only one part before mixing, you'll have a better visual on when the product is completely mixed.

Nice one, ill try this on the rally car, those powerflex rubbers cost a fortune, great idea.

Great idea and demo video, thanks for sharing. I like that I saw this BEFORE I did my engine swap not after!

Awesome! Job. Keep it up and keep posting

That was totally cool. Had no idea you could do this.

I have to say next time I need a carrier bearing insulator for a drive line I'm going to do this. New carrier bearings are $185 up to over $1000 if you can even get one it's in my experience almost always the rubber insulator that rots and not the bearing. In my old Datsun I would of had to get a new driveline made to get a carrier bearing. So I cut up a mudflap and wrapped the carrier bearing every couple years I had to rewrap it . But this man im going to try it.

Never thought about repouring mounts. ir, actually msking new custom mounts for a new project. thank you for a nice introduction to this!

Perfect low cost DIY solution! Love this idea! We just replaced the motor mounts in my son's 69 Bronco, not sure this would have worked for that but I could picture making body bushings and linkage bushings using this method as well?! Thanks for the video!

This is some great insight, i love it. definitely will try it..

Thanks to this guy I am saving $1000 on motor mounts

I'm impressed, i didnt know that this was possible. I'd set it up in a customwood MDF jig & bolt the parts in place, you could also do the holes in the rubber by using long thin bolts with plastic straws around them. I have had one car i could have 'saved' using this idea. & Currently 2 strut arms that need this done. ( Good balljoint @ each end, + worn bush in centre ) Thankyou/m

This is insane! How have I not heard of this before?!

Thanks for the video and help👍

the whole measuring and offsetting the pins is sketchy to me so if i were to do this i would just pour the poly in the motor mount with the old insert in there already, maybe drill holes or cut out some of the old stuff

Very informative and instructive. Gave me some great resource ideas.

wow ! you just helped me fix something that I made a long time ago thank you. Thank you ! I love it when a plan comes together thank you

Clean the mount with denatured alcohol, use masking tape to make sure you don't run everywhere and fill the voids in the rubber mount with windshield adhesive. Works just as well, quicker, cheaper, easier.

I would highly recommend doing this in a well ventilated area and wearing gloves and a respirator. I work with PU (polyurethane) on a daily basis as a mold maker and this stuff can make you really sick! DO NOT USE this in your living room! Aside from that, Smooth-On makes some great products for prototyping, I use them daily! +1 If you have access to a vacuum pot, you can degas the urethane prior to pouring. This will get rid of any unwanted air bubbles. Also, most polyurethane rubber compounds can be post-cured in a scientific oven to reach optimal mechanical properties. Cheers!

Badass! Best DIY ive seen in years!!! Youre awesome! Thanks!

Great video! Thanks for the info, I will be using this in the future.

Ingenious brother don't let the naysayers get to you here you're idea is sound and I'll be doing my upper ford mount this weekend to see how it works out. Thanks

It's so nice to watch a video right after you've bought all factory parts for a car and driving it ;-((((((((((((((((((((((((((

Thanks. This will work great for some discontinued rear swing arm bushings for my minivan. You can also use a saws all to get the inner pin out of the rubber if you have one.

Going to do this for my Mk1 MR2 also. Premade for our car is insanely priced... Nice job bro

Hi there will this stuff be alright? Polytek EasyFlo 60 Thanks

thanks a lot for sharing your idea. what kind of product u use. and where I can get it ?? the mix I mean

awesome video. definatly gonna try this on my truck

Thanks for making this! I am finally getting around to getting new tires and sway bar links for my AW11, and this will help me a lot when I get to fabricating some new motor mounts.

I feel like a wax paper on the cardboard would probably release easier

These videos are good bro!! Keep them coming!!

Nice job, love the do it yourself idea of this, even if it is for hard to get parts.

Nice How To. Thanks for sharing!

Mate that was awesome. Well made video and very informative.

Excellent idea. Thanks for sharing!

Thanks for your time and effort making this video.

thanks, very informative. good detail.

Awesome! I'll have to do this at some point. Good work sir.

About 15 years ago I did this for my Infiniti G20. But I used 3M Window adhesive It's black polyurethane in a tube. I Can't remember, but it was maybe $10 a tube(small caulk tube).

instead of burning the old rubber out I've drilled it out. Still a pain in the butt. Thanks for the video, I will try it.

you did good work and for the price is a good opportunity of learning something new!!! congratulations!!!

I used a vibrating plate to settle air bubbles. Amazing how much air traps

Should try wax paper on top of the cardboard, very cool, might have to try this

I used a calking tube of polyurethane normally used to install windshields instead of the 2 part. it only comes in black but the motor mounts are not that visible. I did not remove all of the rubber, only the loose bits and just filled all the holes, worked great.

Just did a set for my 2010 accent, super awesome mod for cars without any aftermarket support

Quicker less painful way to remove the inserts if you don't have a press (I find it easier than using the press) is an air hammer, chisel attachment and a bench vice ;)

You sir, are an Epic hero!! thank you for sharing this..

Wow they look great. Good job!

I've discovered this channel yesterday and already love it, i'm into car too!

Super brillant idea! 😉

Trust me you can remove the pin from the rubber using a hole saw.

Fantastic info. Brilliant approach

excellent tutorial. thank you I have learn a lot

So how are the engine mounts holding up and how are they performing overall?

Gracias y excelente, como se llaman los dos compuestos quimicos? Saludos desde México.

Great video,. Will help a lot of people!

Excellent Tutorial Buddy, I shall do this on my golf

This is great stuff, thank you Thomas Joseph. i am a DIY'fer, i would love to know where in Jamaica i could get this product type or similar to buy????

if you only heat the pin it only melts/burns the rubber around the pin and makes it a hell of a lot less messy. aim the flame down the center of the pin and the pin just slides out on its own

Excellent instructional video. Great job.

Excellent filming, editing, lighting--everything! Once of the best DIY vids. Cool!

so Great

Are you sure that the pin in the middle is not centred in the old mounts because they have been pushed off centre over the years?

Amazing work! Thanks fornsharing this! Ill be doing this fornmy mini vtec conversion!

OUTSTANDING video! Many thanks.