I’ve gotten pretty far behind on making product reviews. Added to the slate are these Stern motor mounts which are replacing a set of RS4 motor mounts.
Another new addition is a Driveshaft Shop single piece drive-shaft. The driveshaft support had been damaged on the manual transmission driveshaft and in weighing my options, one being to purchase an aftermarket support to try and install, go with a completely re-manufactured driveshaft, or purchase the single piece unit, I decided the added cost would be worth the easier install and slightly lighter weight. I will be interested to see if I notice a difference.
I also began to re-install the motor and transmission. I decided to begin trying to install the axles while the motor was still a good ways out from the mounts so that I could have an easier time of it. That didn’t work as well as I had planned and after a good 3 to 4 hours of work I finally had inched, literally, the motor into position where I could bolt the axles to the transmission. At times I was lowering the motor a half an inch at a time to ensure nothing was being bound up or crushed. I’m seriously considering just installing the axles after the motor is in place the next time I do this.
As an additional note, I connected the stainless steel slave cylinder line while the motor was pretty far out. It was a fair bit more difficult to get the AN fittings to thread properly versus the stock configuration which just snaps into place. I ended up removing the driver’s side primary O2 sensor so that I could get my hand into a position where I could get the threads to mesh properly. With the O2 sensor out of the way things went smoother.
I also ended up removing the bottom portion of the transmission mounts so that I could manipulate the axles. Yet another reason to think about installing the axles at the end the next time,