Some metal polish and a dremel with a polishing bit ought to do the trick...

Yep, and Dremel makes the polishing compound. If you got your Dremel in a kit, you might have some already. It comes in little cylinder. I'm eager to see how this works out!

Mothers Mag & Aluminum polish is great. Not sure how it'd turn out with the mount... could end up looking like you chrome plated it. :)

LOL, bling bling.

Yeah it did come with some polishing stuff, if i post pictures later its because it came out well. If I dont....well lets just be happy it goes under the car and under a chassis frame.

:icon18:

Just don't break it now!

Any updates?

Yup. I do want to check with Adam before I post thought because results were...interesting.

Hmmm...

hmmmmmm!!!! You have me interested.....

Yeah, definitely interested... seems like it might be... ummm... not so good?

I will post a writeup and diy tonight. Sorry guys for making you wait.

DIY & Review, NOW! :icon18:

I'm really interested to see what your findings were. Especially since these guys are only like 30 mins down the road from me.

Uh oh. I had really high hopes for this :(

Are you going to post the review in the original thread?

OK, so here's the review as promised.

Installation:

It was extremely easy. Its 6 bolts and its done. Very easy access, doesn't require any special tools, however you do need to find a way to support the transmission so it doesn't sag when you take off the mount.

This is what you are looking for under the car. Its right by where the driveshaft starts:
http://i605.photobucket.com/albums/t...401024x768.jpg
http://i605.photobucket.com/albums/t...411024x768.jpg

Support the transmission somehow. We used this guy, but you can use whatever as long as its sturdy enough to hold up the weight:
http://i605.photobucket.com/albums/t...421024x768.jpg

Remove the bolts:
http://i605.photobucket.com/albums/t...501024x768.jpg

Stock Mount:
http://i605.photobucket.com/albums/t...471024x768.jpg
http://i605.photobucket.com/albums/t...531024x768.jpg

Side by side comparisons.
http://i605.photobucket.com/albums/t...491024x768.jpg
http://i605.photobucket.com/albums/t...481024x768.jpg

Removed:
http://i605.photobucket.com/albums/t...511024x768.jpg

Z1 Mount on. Make sure the "arrow point" is pointing towards the back of the car:
http://i605.photobucket.com/albums/t...521024x768.jpg


After that, just put the bolts back in and your are done.


Thoughts:

Alright, so did it make a big difference? Absolutely. On the pro side, it made shifts much more positive. Shifting feels very consistent in every situation. It feels crisper and more exact when you put it into gear. You get this sensation like no matter what you are doing; accelerating or decelerating, the shifter is attached to something that is completely solid instead of something that has some give to it. As expected, that off-throttle jerking in low gears has been reduced. Instead of getting a sort of reverberating stop-go jerkiness that you get with the stock mount, you get this "load, unload, over" type of a feeling. Its hard to describe. Think of it this way... with the stock one it feels like the transmission is moving back and forth as it loads with the engine. With the hardened mount it feels like the whole car is a solid piece being acted on by the loading/unloading of the engine. You still feel it jerk, but it does it less and less abruptly.

Now the problem is this... and you folks knew there was a problem coming.

We know our engine and tranny are notoriously coarse as we go up in the RPMS, well guess what...you can hear and feel EVERYTHING. You can hear the synchros speeding up and slowing down when you put the clutch in and out. You can hear every little engine sound, clutch sound and chassis sound X100. Sounds like I have straight cut gears inside the car. If that wasn't bad enough, as you can imagine, huge amounts of vibration is transferred into the cabin. When I got home after the install, my whole body had that tingling sensation you get when you hold on to something tha'ts vibrating for too long. Just revving the car in neutral shakes you like a massage chair. My friend was joking that its a nice massage mod and that maybe girls would really love it.

I talked to Z1 and they said to give it a few hundred miles to let it bed in because it should get a little better. I drove around 100 miles this weekend and it has not really improved much. I am going to leave it in for the week and see if there is any improvement in NVH levels. It feels so good for shifting that I really don't want to let this one die. Please keep in mind that it is a product in development and it still needs to be altered a bit before production. I think if we made it less stiff it would get rid of a lot of the NVH, but it will also feel more like the stock one.

I think this would be excellent on a dedicated race car, but as it is right now, I don't feel the level of NVH is acceptable for a street driven car. Perhaps what we need are shifter and differential bushings + a softer version of the transmission mount. I am not happy that the side effects were so bad since shifting feels excellent. Way more composed and consistent than the stock one. Z1 said they would look into lowering the stiffness of the bushing if it's necessary. He will probably chime in and tell us what the plan is.

Great review, hopefully Z1 can get this worked out

This was the "comfort" version, right? Can't imagine what the race version would be like :rofl2: Hopefully Z1 can get this dialed in.

Dang, sad to hear about the NVH problems. I was really going through for that mount... I just hope that RCZ won't have any more problems and I'll keep my hopes up....

Thanks for the review, Raul. I kind of figured there were going to be some significant NVH issues once I knew you wanted to talk to Z1 before you posted.

I don't mind the noise as much as I would hate the increase in the vibration

Hey guys,

I've looked through some reviews of other people with the 370z version of the mount and the common factor is that it was a great installation and there was a small price in comfort. Others claim that after a FEW hundred miles, there were no issues. I'm hoping this NVH issue will go away soon, I'm sure we all are...

By the way, getting my bridgestone RE-11s in two days...Can't wait to swap out the OEMs for those....

If you've ever been in a car with a really noisy transmission I think you'd change your mind (for a daily driver, anyways). The noise gets very annoying and the vibration just takes it over the top.

sounds like the right part for me! :) you know who to look up if you take it off... thx for the great review

You guys are all welcome. I wish install hadn't been as much as it was, apparently there was a rule I didnt know about where they charge me one hour minimum even though it was 10 minutes of work. Some of the quirks of testing stuff out, it doesn't always go perfectly. Its all good though, its all part of the job :)

yup thats why its better to do these things yourself. great to hear the mount helped.

Thx for the great review! +rep

Thanks Raul for taking the time out to try this out. I pm'd you but I'll post it here too since everyone should hear/see it. When I did the 75A (stiffer than yours) mount in my own car (350Z), I literally thought we had forgotten to reconnect my exhaust! I've got a build motor, Crawford headers, test pipes and a titanium exhaust. Everything inside the car resonated and was much louder. The rear glass had a noticeable resonance at the 2500-4000 rpm point. You even felt it in the steering wheel. This was done on a Saturday afternoon. I spoke to the engineer on it and he assured me to just keep driving it and it would settle in, so I did. It made a world of difference. By the following Wednesday, I had done around 350 miles in the car, a mix of highway and alot of backroad (so lots of shifting, accel/decel) and it had settled in perfectly. It was still a deeper sound in the cabin but none of the resonance was there.

If you've got some time to do some more miles, give it a go and let me know. I'll also talk internally and see what we can do about a lower durometer as well.

Thanks again!

Interesting. So let's assume RCZ racks up a few hundred miles quickly and confirms this. How long before these go into production and are available for purchase?

I'm hoping that things settle in as I'd love to firm up the shifting action.

Hopefully it will, and I am sure RCZ will report back after a week of driving.
Thanks for doing this RCZ, hopefully now with one on a car we can dial everything in to get perfection for this part.

I mentioned this a while back when this was first talked about. I think you will find a lot of your problems are from using two different bushing materials. your motor mounts (most likely softer bushing) are fighting your trans mount bushing which is now much firmer.

You have to look as the motor and trans as one piece since they are solidly bolted together. And since this is the case you cannot use two different bushing materials because they will fight each other, which might be why the Z1 mount is 'loosening up" when in fact it is wearing out prematurely from fighting the vibrations that the motor mounts are allowing.

I learned all this the hard way with suspension bushings and it took me 3-4 bushing sets to realize you have to change out all the bushings that are affected to the same material other wise they are just going to fight each other.

So I feel that until you get some motor mount bushings that are of the same stiffness you will continue to have this problem.

Good point.

The factory motor mounts are MUCH stiffer than the factory transmission mount. By increasing the durometer on the transmission we're actually better balancing things than even Nissan does from the factory. We tested the factory 370Z motor mounts extensively as we had also planned to possibly release a urethane version down the road. We decided for the time being that such a mount would not be beneficial, and if a mount is to be developed, a solid one would be the best solution. That is still in the design phase though, and not something we have any immediate plans for (since there are still so few cars out there). FWIW, this is exactly the same case with the 350Z. The motor mounts were significantly stiffer than the transmission mount.

Urethane settles....that is the nature of a product that has some level of give to it, and particularly one with a 110 lbs transmission bolted to it. The mounts we're using on the 350Z's have been R&D for quite a while before I even tested it on my car own car. I've inspected the mounts personally after months of use, track days, and no wearing is taking place. If any was present, I never would have installed it on my own car, and I'd certainly never sell it. I frankly don't need the money that badly to bother dealing with stuff that's not going to make our customers happy.

We've got a few other ideas on how to even further reduce vibrations and I'll be looking over those in more depth as well

So RCZ, did you install the Comfort edition, or the Race edition?

Comfort.

ouch.

Raul, thanks for the GREAT review. And as usual, for being a willing test bed +1 rep :tup:

You're all welcome. I will definitely keep this updated throughout the following couple of weeks. Either I'm getting used to it or the vibration is starting to ease a little already.

^ that's great news for the rest of us Raul, thanks :tup:

That is Great News! Thanks for being the guinea pig RCZ. Ha..

How are the SPC front and rear camber arms holding up...are you still happy with the performance?