BFI Stage 1 Engine & Tranny Mounts

[Hambone]

I'll update this Friday when I can get pictures. I spoke with a local mechanic who gave me some pointers on lining things up.

 

[KyACRASH]

It shouldn't matter on the side to side placement of the mount if you are only doing one mount at a time, the engine is not moving, your mount is. All four threaded holes on the engine and frame side stay in the same place. You can move the mount either way, but the threaded holes you're putting the bolts into haven't moved. I could see if you had them both off for whatever reason, then you would need the measurements to center the drivetrain again.

I may be not understanding fully what you're saying, but I think the bold sentence here contradicts itself. For the transmission mount - you are correct, all 4 holes on the frame side stay in place, but the three large bolts that go through the mount into the transmission can move. the holes are much larger than the diameter of the bolts. Referencing the ETKA diagram you provided, the only way to ensure dimension x and x remain parallel is to move the engine.

 

[Hambone]

So I've got into the car and here is where I am at.

I pulled the bolt from the dogbone. My engine mount from the first round of install last week looks good and aligned (to me, at least). The powertrain did not move or shift at all when taking off the OEM, and install lined up/threaded perfectly.

Here is where things get tricky and frustrating. Its obvious engine forces (before I realized I may not have aligned it properly) turned the BFI mount a bit. After uninstalling it this was easy to correct. Cursory inspection of the hardware, mount, and the bolt holes/DSG case reveal no obvious damage. I only had these in for about 7 days and 5 of them I babied the hell out of it.

I have no alignment hole as in previous transmissions. The bolts connecting the BFI mount really have no play, so once that is seated it really is a matter of getting the transmission bolts to line up with the mount. Obviously the powertrain shifted and I am having a hell of a time getting it to line back up. Thoughts? Tips or tricks? Where's a good place to use a pry bar to rotate the engine a bit towards the firewall? I'm taking a short break atm before I head back out to see what kind of progress I can make.

 

[shovelhd]

Holy crap. The whole thing is racked counterclockwise. Your engine mount doesn't look right, either. This is what I would do.

Put the car up on four jackstands, with the body level. Loosen, but do not remove, every bolt. Start with the dogbone. Remove the dogbone bolt. Push, pull, pry, nudge, holler at the assembly so that you can reinsert the dogbone bolt without tension on it. It should thread in cleanly and torque up correctly. Then line up the transmission mount with the bolts loose, and lightly snug it up. Check the engine mount alignment. It should be parallel with the attachment points fore and aft. If the arm isn't perfectly centered in the fender bolt, I don't think it matters much. Mine is off by 1mm and it's fine. What matters is that the engine and transmission mounts are square to the drivetrain and the bolts are not under tension. Once it all looks good, torque to spec.

I did not remove, or even back off, the dogbone bolt when I put mine in. There's enough flex in that assembly to get the mounts lined up. It acts as a pivot point to help keep the drivetrain in line. I also did not like lifting the drivetrain by the oil pan using a block. It scared the crap out of me. I used the transmission bellhousing for both sides.

Others here have a lot more experience than me, so take this FWIW. Good luck.

 

[Hambone]

Your engine mount doesn't look right, either.

Put the car up on four jackstands, with the body level. Loosen, but do not remove, every bolt. Start with the dogbone. Remove the dogbone bolt. Push, pull, pry, nudge, holler at the assembly so that you can reinsert the dogbone bolt without tension on it. It should thread in cleanly and torque up correctly. Then line up the transmission mount with the bolts loose, and lightly snug it up. Check the engine mount alignment. It should be parallel with the attachment points fore and aft. If the arm isn't perfectly centered in the fender bolt, I don't think it matters much. Mine is off by 1mm and it's fine. What matters is that the engine and transmission mounts are square to the drivetrain and the bolts are not under tension. Once it all looks good, torque to spec.

I did not remove, or even back off, the dogbone bolt when I put mine in. There's enough flex in that assembly to get the mounts lined up. It acts as a pivot point to help keep the drivetrain in line. I also did not like lifting the drivetrain by the oil pan using a block. It scared the crap out of me. I used the transmission bellhousing for both sides.

Others here have a lot more experience than me, so take this FWIW. Good luck.

Whats wrong with the engine mount? The base of the mount is parallel with the chassis. I may not have taken the best picture, but based on what I previously read, its pretty much to spec (10mm gap between the mount and engine bracket, etc). Also, keep in mind I have the BFI dogbone insert as well.

I have the car up on a quickjack. Its as level as I can get it (damn near level). Now are you suggesting that I get all the mounts at least threaded and tightened down but loosen them all with just weight support on the DSG housing with a jack? and then basically shift the entire engine/tranny assembly until it all lines up? That goes against pretty much most of the consensus which is tranny-engine-dogbone install, in that order.

 

[Diggs24]

Hmmm, I did Engine first then tranny. Didn't touch the dogbone. Just moving the motor up/down could get it lined back up with no issue but I have the tranny insert not the billet mount.

 

[Hambone]

I refuse to part out, Diggs!

That said, I did double-check my engine mount and it was off, specifically the alignment of the mount against the engine bracket. I had the jack support from DSG side, cracked the bolts loose, and used a pry bar to gently shift it. Its now even, and I tightened it back up. Gave me a handful of MM closer to alignment on the transmission side. The engine moves pretty easily by wrestling with it. This is where I wish I had a second set of hands.

 

[Diggs24]

ratcheting straps

 

[Hambone]

I had a set but who the hell knows where they're at now. Ofc they aren't here when I need 'em!

That said, here's where I am at right now. Bolts are not tightened up, but this is looking a hell of a lot better than what I started with this morning.

 

[shovelhd]

That looks a lot better. It could probably be twisted back a little bit CCW but NBD. How does the fender bolt look?

 

[shovelhd]

Whats wrong with the engine mount? The base of the mount is parallel with the chassis. I may not have taken the best picture, but based on what I previously read, its pretty much to spec (10mm gap between the mount and engine bracket, etc). Also, keep in mind I have the BFI dogbone insert as well.

I have the car up on a quickjack. Its as level as I can get it (damn near level). Now are you suggesting that I get all the mounts at least threaded and tightened down but loosen them all with just weight support on the DSG housing with a jack? and then basically shift the entire engine/tranny assembly until it all lines up? That goes against pretty much most of the consensus which is tranny-engine-dogbone install, in that order.

I did my dogbone insert weeks before installing the mounts, so I left it alone.

 

[Hambone]

That looks a lot better. It could probably be twisted back a little bit CCW but NBD. How does the fender bolt look?

They're even. The BFI mount doesn't allow play left to right, only forwards and back along the fender. They are currently centered.

 

[Hambone]

Went ahead and torqued everything to spec, put everything back together. Going to drive it as normal until my oil change which is in about 1k miles. I'll take a look at them after the fact to see if anything has shifted. Appreciate the help and feedback so far!

 

[Ricki Ducati]

I installed the stage 1 engine and trans mount over the holidays in my mk7 dsg GLI and I’ve had pretty bad nvh even after ~1k miles. The worst is getting down to <1k rpm coming to a stop but also noticeably when in manual mode in 3/4 ~3k rpm it almost feels like I’m running on rumble strips.

I have the 034 upper/lower already installed. I put my car on the quick jack and used the scissor jack to install the trans mount first which wasn’t that hard outside of the heads of the bfi bolts being just slightly too short for the angled socket I had which made tightening them a pain.

The next day I installed the engine mount and had the worst time getting it to line up. Its like the engine rolled back or something when removing the oem mount because I couldn’t for the life of me get the engine lined up correctly to get both bolts on the engine mount into the correct holes. I had to loosen the top of the mount then pull the engine as hard as I could to get the engine side bolt in it was no fun.

Unbeknownst to me at the time, the length of the front and rear frame bolt for the engine mount are not the same length. I screwed the short bolt in the front hole slightly hoping to use it to give me a stop point when lifting the engine up but I ended up ripping the bolt out of the frame.

I was able to screw the correct bolt in about halfway by hand but couldn’t get it further. I opted to use a breaker bar and got the bolt screwed in but I’m assuming I fucked the threads in the frame and cross threaded the bolt so I’m definitely not looking forward to dealing with fixing that in the future. Has anyone ever had this happen before?

After reading through this thread I realize that my engine mount is aligned atrociously so I’m going to get an actual floor jack and give it another go aligning both mounts tomorrow. Would loosing the trans mount a little help getting this engine mount lined up?

 

[Ricki Ducati]

Well I was able to reinstall the transmission side mount though I’m not sure that it was all bad. I realized the engine side is only misaligned because that layer is skewed so I went to loosen it up using a 1 size too small allen wrench and I ended up stripping the head. I emailed BFI to see if they could sell me a replacement so fingers crossed it comes out with no issues. Somewhat thankfully it stripped before I was able to loosen it so I can still drive the car while I wait.