Broken Rear Diff Mount Options

[cax_11]

After a night of boosting about and chirping tires into 2nd gear when I was headed home when I let my foot off the gas I heard a loud thud at the back.
After doing further inspection this is what I found.


After checking out my options, I could feel a giant dent in my wallet before I even spent anything
So basically I cruised around with it like that for about a month, no speeding or hard shifting, then I remembered something I did with my other car
a Mitsubishi Mirage, I filled the broken mounts with 3M window Weld. I compared costs C-One diff mount 195usd+100usd shipping thinking about that just gave me a bit of a headache, then the window weld which was 22usd+some elbow grease .

The route I took was obvious . I know it would mean about a week off road but was willing to save the cash. So I went under the car and removed the mount.

Here we have it.

Back side

Diff side

Back side

Diff side


Pretty torn up if you ask me. I was able to push out the metal piece between the rubber that sat on the diff with very little to no effort.
Now I decided to completely clear all the old rubber but before I did so, I thought it'd be smart to mark out the location of the center piece that bolted onto the diff, so here's what I did. I had a can of wd40 that I used to spray on those mad tight cross member bolts and diff to subframe bolt and sprayed it on the ridge of the metal on the diff then got a piece of cardboard and just rested it on the card board, obviously the wet spots would make marks. Made about 3 of em just for good measures. Took about an hour and a half chiseling away at the old rubber to get the bare metal, cleaned up both pretty well .

Then obviously if am putting in the window weld on one end its going straight through to the floor, so here's what I did, thinking it wouldn't stick to foil paper(I was wrong) I got some foil paper wrapped it tightly over one end and placed duct tape over it to give it some ridgidity.



and there is the result, in this photo below you can see the mark outs I was talking about earlier using the wd40 and the edge of the mount while it was still fitted together with the bad rubber.



and here we have a closer look at my mount ready to be filled



Now here's the window weld below, it took about 3/4 of the container and I used a caulking gun to squeeze it in, and some random flat pieces of wood to pack it down properly and level it off.



oh and I cut out the piece of cardboard and set the mount in it to prevent messing up the hold thing, this urethane thing is very messy to deal with, if you get any on your hand it'll be at least 2 days until you can get it completely off, gas helps and hand cleaner as well but won't fully come off until it has dried completely.



and then I began to fill, no pics after that because I got some on my hands

Here we have it one day old on the top side



It's far from dry here, it just managed to form a dry skin on top, while pressing on it you can feel the soft stuff inside. after waiting 4 days I could comfortably say that that same side was dry, but for the other side, it seems as though the foil paper can been keeping it from direct effects of the atmosphere which hardens it and it still was soft on that side. I managed to tear it off and scratch off the little pieces of tin foil and back to the drying board/my house roof.

at the end of 6days I ended up with this on the other side



on the seventh day I re-installed and went for a little test drive and succes!! no thud noise from the rear, I drove very lightly for a next week. and found something a very sadening on the day after the install..

I seemed to have lost the photo but anyways this is one month after the install, the thrashing began from 7days after the install, so 3 weeks of intense thrashing left me with this, which is the same thing I saw that day after the install, a little on the inside was wet so it oozed out the top very slightly but it dried and now solid as rock, it gives the rear diff a very connected feel I am very happy with the results. No flex or movements that I can feel.



and then here we have not related it any way a shot of my exhaust during the removal of the diff mount, 3" from midpipe back with deleted resonator ghetto welded(THE CAT IS GUTTED AS WELL)



This post has been edited by cax_11: Apr 23, 2011 - 7:24 AM