gw204

I was out shoveling snow from the driveway yesterday and saw a wet spot under the front of my daughter's '01 ES300 yesterday. The liquid appears be dripping from the center of the front cross member and has a brown tint to it and has a distinct smell to it...so I know it's not trapped and melting snow. Checked all the fluids and they nothing matched the color and all are at the appropriate levels. Further poking around revealed a wet spot on the cross member just under the front motor mount, so it looks like I need to replace that mount.

The car has 215K on it and isn't without it's issues. There has been some talk of replacing it at the end of summer before she goes back to school, so I don't necessarily want to spend a small fortune on an OEM active mount.

So I was wondering if anyone has ever used one of the aftermarket brands (RockAuto has WESTAR and DEA/MRC) to replace an active mount, or can one simply substitute a traditional mount from a non-VVTi motor? I saw one post talk about traditional replacement and to just plug the vacuum line but I don't recall seeing any follow up on how well that worked.

Thanks.

LeX2K

First off in almost all cases aftermarket mounts are terrible, they will last a year then fall apart. There are exceptions someone here may know of the good ones for the ES. I would check into the price of the OEM mount, non active version.

No reason you can't swap in the regular rubber mount, I personally think the active mount is overkill and does little to nothing. These engines run smooth enough already.

nsghtbrwry

Last year I was fixing up a trashed '99 ES for a friend, and replaced the OEM active mount (big hole) with a Westar. I was ancy about it because as L2k said, aftermarket mounts tend to suck. But it's going strong 15k later and working perfectly w.r.t. the active part. At idle, you can't tell that the engine is there.

Let's see how it holds up for the next 85k, with all the effort I put into that car my friend is not allowed to get rid of it until it hits 500k (currently at 258k).

Oro

I used a Westar side mount on the left (transmission) side. It broke in about a month. The warranty replaced the part and the 2nd one is ok after 2+ years now.

tomf

Last Septemper, I ordered a Westar for my 99 ES00 from rockauto. I had to send it back because when I went to transfer the VSV FOR ACTIVE CONTROL ENGINE MOUNT from the old mount to new mount, the VSV vacuum line did not match up. And there was no easy way to modify it to get it to work. I ended up buying an oem mount and it fit perfectly.

nsghtbrwry

I had that problem as well, the line wouldn't fit the nipple on the Westar. I also bought (and returned, thanks Amazon) a DEA mount, which was quite a bit worse than the Westar, not only with the nipple but the general quality; the Westar isn't OEM, but the DEA is in a class of its own in how crappy it is. I think I ended up getting a hose adapter, worked fine.

satiger

iTrader: (1)

Go with OEM if you plan to keep the car for some more years. Also, I wouldn't delay replacing it as it wears more put stress on radiator/transmission and engine.

gw204

Thanks guys. Will probably go OEM but was also considering using a non-active Beck Arnley mount. As least that's a name that I recognize...

I called my local dealer for a price on a mount and was quoted $270. So, who do you guys use for online vendors of OEM parts?

tomf

I used lexuspartsnow.com. The mount was $196 shipped.

artbuc

There are only a few decent aftermarket engine mount manufacturers eg Corteco, Boge, and a couple of others and none of them are cheap just a little less expensive than OE and most are for Euro cars. US and Asian go with OE. ”

gw204

Update...

Was all set to order the OEM front mount and decided that I didn't want to put that kind of money into one engine mount, so I instead ordered an active Westar front mount and dogbone since some people have reported OK experiences with them. That was a mistake. Right away I noticed that the vacuum port on the Westar was different than the original one. No big deal though, I can work with that. So I got it all in and when I went to torque the bolts down, the threads in the welded on nut pulled out. Ugh. I was gonna cut the nut off the Westar and replace it with the nut from the orignal mount but decided just to throw the original mount back in for now and get a different one. Once that was done I went to put the dogbone in. No dice there either. I was about 3/16" longer than the original one. So that has to go back too...

Ugh...

Hayk

iTrader: (1)

artbuc