Vorshlag motor mount stud broken! Which resulted in much $$$$ carnage.

[DocWyte]

So I have a track day this Saturday. I just installed a used Traqmate system and last night after work I decided it'd be a good idea to make sure all my wiring for the Traqmate was working. Had to redo the power wire and pop in a new fuse for the glove box light circuit, which is where I piggy backed switched power for the Traqmate.

Then I started the car to see if my tach signal is working. BOOM! WTF is that?! I turn the car off immediately and go investigate.

This is what I find....



That's a BRAND new fan! Not only that, when it exploded, it also punched a hole in my BRAND new MZ3 S54 radiator, plus it broke off the top of the radiator shroud. WTF!

I bought this car used and it has Vorshlag red motor mounts. I go to check them and find that both motor mount upper nuts are finger tight. Ummm, ok, so that's why I just broke $300+ worth of brand new parts. So I go to tighten them and the drivers side one basically just spins after I put very little torque on it. Great, the stud is broken in the motor mount! Apparently this is a common failure on these?

Vorshlag sells an "updated" base plate/stud for the mounts, so I call them first thing this morning to see if I can get them tomorrow. Nope, they're out of stock and don't know when they'll be making a new batch. In talking with the sales guy there about why the nuts came loose and how a stud can break, I basically got deflection.

Pretty pissed off right now. Yeah, stock motor mounts may sag but the nuts don't back off and the studs don't break!

So what do I do now? Buy a new set of stock motor mounts? Oh yeah, and hardware for them. Or buy a set of AKG motor mounts?

Also, since I have to buy a new fan and radiator anyways, should I buy the BimmerWorld electric fan setup? Stick with the MZ3 radiator? What about swapping over to a Stewart water pump? Does the Stewart water pump lower coolant temperatures?

[propcar]

I'd go with OEM mounts or Bimmerworld GroupN mounts. Glad I didn't go with those mounts when I was shopping..

[nick325xit 5spd]

Poly engine mounts fail. Period.

[DocWyte]

Nick, the engine mount is fine. The stud snapped. To me, that's an unacceptable failure.

#1 the nut shouldn't have backed off.
#2 when I went to tighten the nut, the stud snapped instantly.
#3 An "updated" part is available, but not right now, because I'm unlucky enough that they're out of stock and don't know when they're going to make more

That's crap man. My car isn't a daily driver and I don't live in an area where salt is used, even if the car was driven in the winter, which it isn't. Simply put, that stud shouldn't have broken, period. That it did means it was under engineered, spec'ed wrong, whatever.

This is $hit sandwich that I shouldn't have had to take a bite of.

[DocWyte]

Well, I wanted to get the Bimmerworld Group N motor mounts but they're back ordered until at least September. Dammit! So I ordered the CSF aluminum radiator, new radiator shroud, Stewart water pump and electric fan kit from Bimmerworld, then called AKG Motorsports and bought a set of their motor mounts.

This was expensive and shouldn't have needed to be done. I also cancelled my track day this Saturday as I won't have the parts in time and I don't feel like doing the labor for this stuff twice by slamming in my old, spare parts, then having to pull them out when the new stuff arrives.

Hoping that "Fair" chimes in here about this....

[Mr Estoril]

So you bought the car with used mounts (just want to make sure I am understanding correctly). Can you confirm they were torqued to spec at some point after you purchased the car? If the PO didn't tighten them down and the motor was rocking then no doubt those studs would have sheared. I'm not saying there wasn't necessarily a part failure but I'm not clear on what the root cause was.

[scooper]

poly mounts are subject to catastrophic failure. A local race shop told me that either stick with rubber/metal ones (OE, OEM, or BW group Ns) or go with metal ones made of aluminum.

Like Mr. Miyagi said, Karate do or karate don't do. If do a little, you get squashed like a grape!

[DocWyte]

Scooper, the mount is fine. The stud broke.

My Estoril, there is no torque spec for these. Just tight. They were tight. Not sure why they got loose, Vorshlag has said the nylocks they used would have the nylon melt out. Maybe that was it.

Regardless, that stud shouldn't break with so little torque

[LockDots]

That sucks man, I'm sorry to hear that. On the up side you got great stuff. I also have a Stewart WP, CSF radiator, and electric fan.

How are you triggering your fan? Currently, I have it wired to be triggered off the aux fan lower and higher temp switch outputs, but soon I'm switching to a probe style adjustable controller to have it kick on a little sooner and not risk burning out the 20yr old aux fan.

[jayjaya29]

Thats why Vorshlag updated the mount design, due to this failure.

When my AKG poly mounts failed in the same way I just drilled and tapped out the aluminum puck to accept a M12 stud. Didn't have any issues after that.

[pbonsalb]

If you can afford it a PWM controller is probably the best. I like the probe to contact coolant through a threaded port in the head, and this can be a pain since most of the PWM controllers use a push in the fins probe or a 3/8 threaded probe. I think I tapped my spare head port as 1/8 NPT. There may be one PWM controller with 1/8 threaded probe, but I cannot remember for sure. Derale, flexalite and even JEGS makes them (the Jegs intellitronix that uses a 1/8 npt probe).

[Pyropete82]

I'm lost...why is an engine mount pair $800? Wtf? You can do a lot more with $800 than for 2 pieces of hard rubber. I don't see how the price is justified....are these make to order by hand by Cartier himself?


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[LockDots]

I'm lost...why is an engine mount pair $800? Wtf? You can do a lot more with $800 than for 2 pieces of hard rubber. I don't see how the price is justified....are these make to order by hand by Cartier himself?


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Because they isolate NVH about as good as rubber, perform like Poly, and last longer than poly. Meaningless for a street car, but one less thing to make part of maintenance for a track car.

[DocWyte]

The $800 price tag is for the real deal, BMW OEM Group N mounts. The Bimmerworld knock offs are a far more affordable $200, which I would've happily paid if they had them in stock.

I would've gotten the Vorshlag "updated" studs IF they had them in stock. Not only are they not in stock, they couldn't even give me an idea of when they would be in stock. I was told they have "several machine jobs ahead of making these and no ETA". Well, alright then, guess your mounts are coming off my car as I have no choice.

Hopefully I don't have the same failure issue with the AKG mounts, several friends have used them in high stress environments (Rally cars) with good success.

Not sure how I'm going to trigger the Spal puller fan, I was just going to piggyback off my auxiliary pusher fan. I don't have to worry about the aux fan, I replaced it last summer as it locked up on me, so its brand new.

Basically everything on my car is brand new, I went through it completely when I bought it last spring. That's why I'm so pissed off about this happening, I just bought all the stuff that got destroyed!

[ben4bama]

I track my M with stock new motor mounts, stock fan , stock radiator , stock water pump, UUC solid rubber trans mounts. no issues.

[Mr Estoril]

The $800 price tag is for the real deal, BMW OEM Group N mounts. The Bimmerworld knock offs are a far more affordable $200, which I would've happily paid if they had them in stock.

I would've gotten the Vorshlag "updated" studs IF they had them in stock. Not only are they not in stock, they couldn't even give me an idea of when they would be in stock. I was told they have "several machine jobs ahead of making these and no ETA". Well, alright then, guess your mounts are coming off my car as I have no choice.

Hopefully I don't have the same failure issue with the AKG mounts, several friends have used them in high stress environments (Rally cars) with good success.

Not sure how I'm going to trigger the Spal puller fan, I was just going to piggyback off my auxiliary pusher fan. I don't have to worry about the aux fan, I replaced it last summer as it locked up on me, so its brand new.

Basically everything on my car is brand new, I went through it completely when I bought it last spring. That's why I'm so pissed off about this happening, I just bought all the stuff that got destroyed!

I ran my AKGs for years and never had a problem. I just now took them out since I am going back to street for the most part. My Spal puller is triggered off the temp probe (just a switch) in the radiator to a relay. It came with my Zionsville kit but its not rocket science to reproduce it yourself.

[pbonsalb]

The new M3 mounts are the same ones used on the E9xM3 so they should be fine for most people, but like any mount, checked periodically, particularly if tracking.

[DocWyte]

Yup, updated part #. I debated just going with a set of stock mounts, but the track day was blown anyways, and friends have had good luck with the AKG mounts, so I bought them instead.

[rajicase]

I've got AKG on my turbo m3. No issues and it is super streetable.

[DocWyte]

Pile of new parts are here. Will hopefully get it all installed this Friday while my son is at school.

[pbonsalb]

So what did you buy for mounts?

[PITT M3 RR]

E9X motor mounts are a good move. I like mine and will just do interval changes per BMW.

- - - Updated - - -

So what did you buy for mounts?

Looks like an AKG box up there

[DocWyte]

Yup, the AKG Motorsports mounts.

[DocWyte]

Well, tore into the car today. So far I've removed the Vorshlag mounts (more on them in a minute), installed the new AKG motor mounts, removed the old water pump and installed the new Stewart water pump and installed the CSF radiator, new shroud and Spal fan.

Unfortunately work came to a bit of a halt as my little son came home from school sick, so I'm keeping an eye on him. I still need to wire the Spal fan and fill and burp the coolant system.

So, the Vorshlag mounts. Here's the deal, the entire stud cam up and out of the drivers side mount. So the stud didn't break, but where it threads into the base plate broke. The threads in the base plate are all goobered up and won't take any torque. It does look like these are the old style base plate/mounts, which are prone to failure.

So while Vorshlags offer of a new stud to me was something, it wouldn't have helped me unfortunately.. I needed their "updated" base plate/studs, which they were (and still?) out of stock of when I called. So basically it was just bad luck on my part that they didn't have the updated parts in stock when I needed them.

[pbonsalb]

Yes, those are early Vorshlag mounts. I never had any trouble with mine but I don't track and track is what shows weakness fast. I bought a used set of the new mounts for my turbo e36m3. For my e90m3, I bought new stock corteco mounts.