After I heard a clunking I looked under the car and saw the control arm bushings looking bad, and motor mounts felt/looked bad, though I didn't necessarily have any problems from those things but they looked bad enough to for sure possibly be causing the clunking. Turns out it was a strut and now I'm replacing both of them, but was reluctant to think it might be them since they were the only parts that had been replaced already in the past. Anyways the passenger motor mount and front motor mount both have a metal shaft coming out the top with a threaded hole and flat spots on two sides that are 22 mm apart. Each one of these motor mounts also has a bracket they bolt to that gets bolted to the engine and the bracket is grooved so the flat spots on the shaft coming out of the motor mount sit between the grooves. Both of the motor mounts I got from RockAuto look identical except the flat spots on those shafts are 90° off from the motor mounts I took out. I assumed that's how the ones I took out must have been originally and after years of use they are no good anymore. It looked like and I assumed I had to put a 22 mm wrench on those flat spots and turn it 90 degrees so that shaft would fit between the grooves on the bracket while the bottom three bolts held it in place and then sat the engine back down on it. Don't ask me how but I somehow got that to happen on the passenger mount by getting a wrench in the and turning a It 90 degrees counterclockwise only because there was an arrow pointing in that direction on the rubber boot. Now that I'm doing the front mount and seeing a video online looks like those are supposed to come set in the correct orientation to line up and don't see anyone jumping through the hoops I had to? I'm very mechanical but not an auto mechanic and thought maybe you are loading the motor mounts by turning it 90 degrees in making it stiffer. Is that a thing or are these cheap China motor mounts 90° off?

 

On my 99 Protege with full AWR mounts I had a BRUTAL amount of NVH. I was almost ready to remove them until someone told me to loosen all the mounting bolts and start the engine then torque them all back down. The reduction in vibration was amazing and because I had gone a few days with it rattling my brain out it felt like stock in comparison. I'm tempted to put mounts in my NA in the future..




snaptube vidmate