Originally Posted by surfaccing

so my car was in the body shop and needed new mounts, i purchased the innovative mounts. here's my write up of how i installed them, i've seen lots of reviews on the mounts but no one showing how to install them and i decided to do a write up for it and when my car is out of the body shop i'll post what i think about the car.
sorry i don't have pictures of how to remove the stock motor mounts as i did it previously last week and didn't grab any pictures but there are a few write up of how to remove the stock mounts. just fyi to remove and install any mount on the driver side your going to have to be underneath the car and you can do pretty much the entire passenger side from the top of the car.

to install the innovative mounts you need to remove your pre-existing (probably oem) motor mounts. that takes a total of (4) 14mm bolts or 9/16th (2 per mount) on the bottom of the engine cradle, then the total (2) 14mm bolt or 9/16th on top of the mount (one per side) into the bracket off the motor. jack up the motor as high as it'll go and pull the motor mount out and away.


this is what it looks like without the oem mount. so you actually need to remove the bracket that bolts into the motor with (4) 14mm or 9/16th bolt and it should be torqued on at 28ft of torque, i actually needed a super long breaker bar to loosen the bolts up, because i don't have a impact, and this might be a bit tight fit for a impact anyways, and be-careful cause your motor is being held up by the jack and it'll move a bit on you.


this is actually the hardest bolt to get out. it's on the passenger side, you have to be underneath the car and i used a deep socket 14mm and it cleared the headers and head shield, most people report that u can't get a impact in here but my breaker bar and socket got in no problem so you don't need to remove the header


the stock brackets pulled out. see the 4 bolts holes, it's not hard to pull out if you can get a socket on them


innovative mounts and my fathers hand covering up the bag of bolts. the bolts they supply you with are 17mm into the engine block instead of the 14mm and the bolts into the engine cradle and between the bushing are 19mm so switch to your bigger socket sizes


you need to put this piece in first and drop the bolts through cause the new mounts sits so close you won't be able to drop the bolts through later! BTW this is backwards too, make sure to flip the piece around. again if it looks like this it's backwards, but put this piece in first!


when you have the bottom piece in, put the piece up against the motor and hand tighten the bolts like i did, that way you can wiggle all the pieces around and get them to fit. if you torque everything down, then your going to have to use the jack to lower the mount and align everything up. i found this easier to do but it's up to you. once u get it all to fit, torque it down. 28ft/lbs into the block and 40ft/lbs into the cradle (at least thats what the book says)


again, hand tightened everything and wiggled it so all the bolts and nuts fit together. notice how high up the mount is sitting. thats how high i got the motor up to remove the stock oem mounts and this made it easy to wiggle everything and get it to fit right

once i had it at that point, i torqued the bolts into the block and slowly had a helper lower the jack as i guided the lower 4 mount bolts into the lower cradle. was a piece of cake once u had it all bolted together and lined it all up.

video of the motor mount idle vibration and rattle, hardly noticeable. before my car was wrecked, there were no rattles or squeaks so none were heard in the video either. if you install the mounts and you have squeaks and rattles then the mounts will probably amplify it, so settle your problems before installing the mounts
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teZq0...kUHmnL9i7siptf

Edited:
I now recommend installing the trans mount first. because the innovative motor mounts will not allow the transmission to be low enough to make installing the upper most bolts a easy and painless install.



2bolts here in the location, 12mm need to be removed

[img] https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/420172_3529346796081_1344567962_4963957_1401123996 _n.jpg
you can remove the catalytic converter if you want, but if not, just take off the two spring loaded bolts and pull the cat aside and it's just 2 extra bolts and exhaust is bolted back up

[img] https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/420820_3529346356070_1344567962_4963956_1921363869 _n.jpg
you need to remove or pull over the catalytic converter to get to this single bolt

[img] https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/425415_3529346956085_1344567962_4963958_175246884_ n.jpg
optional to remove the two bolts to remove the brace, this isn't necessary but it gets the brace out of the way because the two bolts holding the rest of the mount are a pain!


this is why i chose to remove the bottom brace, again up to you.
also THESE NUTS ARE SPOT WELDED. so put a 14mm socket on the driver side and remove the bolts... if you try it this way you will have to break the factory spot welds to get it to turn.... ask me how i know >


the oem mount removed. the two bolt carriers in the transmission is why you need to get the trans low! see how close it is to the chassis on the left, because the angle of the innovative mount makes it impossible to install the bolts through the passenger side!


get the transmission as low as you can to install the top bolts, then re-install the oem mounts into the chassis and tighten it all down. and re-install your catalytic converter, or test pipe.... or straight pipe, it's your car after all

Edit:
my initial review after the first day

straight out of the body shop and onto the street for almost 50miles today. gotta say at the begging i noticed a lot of vibration and a new rattle in the passenger foot well somewhere and my soft top latches seemed to be rattling a bit. so i unlatched the soft top and latched it back down and that solved the issue. at first i really noticed the vibration.
but honestly i haven't driven my car in over a month because it's been in the shop all this time. now i installed a test pipe and i noticed more drone in my car and the rear end noise seemed to be a lot louder then i remember. honestly i don't remember the gear and clutch wine to be so loud! but I'll get used to it again

so yes the innovative mounts are a lot stronger then the stock mounts. there poly bushing instead of the liquid filled rubber mount. so it's going to vibrate more! but it really isn't that much more! you'll notice the center of your hood and the foot wells have more vibration, and if you have a lot of rattles there only going to get worse!

honestly i say if you upgrade and don't want to worry about the vibrations just do the motor mounts not the transmission mounts. the difference is that trans-mount really ties the whole thing together and really locks the motor and trans into the frame.
but honestly for me i love it. i wouldn't change a thing! it really makes the car feel like a little go-kart!
the added noise of the gears whining, yes i love it. then again my second vehicle is a motorcycle and that thing shakes worse at idle.

but at the end of the day i was used to it, i didn't notice any extra rattles or the gear whine anymore. i think for me it's been that i haven't been in my car for over a month so i was coming into the car fresh and noticing everything. i say if you do it go in with a fresh mind and stop looking for all the little issues. just swap them and live with it. within a week it'll settle in the bushing and it'll be find.
if you want something more like the stock set up, then get the 65A mounts and live with softer bushing failing, because honestly the stock mounts r garbage! just swap to the innovative motor mounts and don't do the trans-mount and that should keep you near the stock setup as your going to get

Edited:
after a few days of driving around, i have to track down some squeaking. my aem v2 intake is rattling up against the radiator fan shroud so that's a easy fix and my passenger door panel or speaker grill is rattling about, again a simple fix. but then again from the beginning my car was very quite in the interior and i never had any issues. so for me this was perfect.
the mounts also stiffened up my suspension, gave me a more planted car in the corner. you can really feel it turn in and the rear tires don't want to break loose as much as they used too. im very impressed and love it, wouldn't even go back to the stock mounts i don't care how awful you say the vibrations are.
any ways, in the video you can see the images distort from the camera being rattled around. the camera was fixed to the window, while it's mostly stopped traffic, off idle and 1mile on the highway back into a parking lot, that seems were everyone is most interested in how the car vibrates with the mounts. but once your moving and turning into the corner you'll love the mounts

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GR99kc3zUEI