Homemade motor mounts for the Mazda Protoege 5

Mazda Protege 5 engine mounts suck. The rubber breaks down, the engine moves about, makes a hell of a racket, and strains stuff that's not supposed to be strained (like the exhaust system I just had to replace).

AWR makes the poly inserts that press into the old mounts for the R and L side mount. But when it's all said and done, it'll cost close to $100 bucks to get it shipped from the states. This is a winter beater so I'm looking for cheaper alternatives.

I was thinking I could snot the thing up with some flexible epoxy. Thoughts? The mount looks like this:

The arm with the two holes bolts to the right side of the engine The housing bolts to the chassis. If I could cut some sort of backing and then snot the epoxy in the other side, it might stabilize it a bit. I'd do the same to the other mounts.

Stupid waste of time and money?

Cheers,

Jeff

You can guy liquid poly from McMaster Carr made especially for this purpose. It works.

I did it to the MX6. Works better than any inserts i've ever used. (Kirkosaurus on the Celica, ES on the Escort)

Not as good as full replacement mounts with solid poly bushings, but it's CERTAINLY an improvement worth doing.

I have it done on my AE92, works well. I used to break mounts all the time (somehow), now they hold up just fine and the car feels a lot more solid. Only downside is severe vibration up to about 900rpm.

Would the hockey puck mod work on a protege 5? Worked on the older proteges if I remember correctly. That's cheap and works well. If not, the window weld or liquid poly works too.

I love the hockey puck idea, works well for up here. Thanks, you guys are great.

In reply to Jeff:

BE WARNED - Hockey puck mounts will introduce a metric crap-ton of vibration into the cabin/steering wheel...if 80A durometer urethane mounts are bad for this, 100+A puck mounts will be considerably worse.

that aside - puck mounts will last forever. Theyre are a great solution if youre just trying to save some cash when replacing a worn out part. If performance is your goal, remember, all the mounts in the system need to be replaced to get real performance gains. If you have 200k-mile old subframe mounts, or crossmember mounts, or transmission mounts...any of them with more flex than the rest will eat up some engine torque.

just food for thought. But in general, Id say go for it...

I used 3M windshield urethane to fill the voids on my boosted Swift GT, worked flawlessly for 40k miles (then sold the car). Not as stiff as a hockey puck would be either.

Oh yeah those hockey pucks are HARD. For a daily driver, I would not replace all the mount with hockey pucks, just the one that takes the torque.

Another alternative is to cram some pieces of rubber hose into the voids.