Thinking of not replacing motor mounts

[se1911]

Any thoughts on potential affect of not replacing the motor mounts?

After reading threads on rough idle, I'm assuming it's my mounts. Been doing it for over a year.

Rough idle in drive and reverse. Worse when just started. Much worse in winter (North Dakota). Not too bad now. Visually, mounts don't look bad.

Have other priorities. Just thinking of putting these off for awhile.

Thanks

 

[The_Roadie]

The engine will sag. Wait long enough and the fan will contact the shroud and quit turning. In the winter you might not notice until the fan clutch is damaged. That can cost you more in the long run.

Watch your fan to shroud distance and see if it decreases. Deferred maintenance has a tradition of being abandoned maintenance. Be careful.

 

[C-ya]

Have you ruled out the rough idle being caused by a dirty throttle body? I thought the motor mounts caused a distinct vibration when the vehicle in gear that goes away when in neutral.

 

[se1911]

I measured around the fan shroud, and the distance is about the same all the way around. May differ by by an 1/8 at most. There is engine movement in D or R with brake on and giving a little gas. Hard to say how much though. Was doing it by myself.

I cleaned the throttle body about 2 years ago.

 

[C-ya]

The throttle body cleaning routine is suggested to be about 30K miles or once a year or whatever makes you feel good. (I have a V8, so I can't remember the interval, just remember seeing it a mentioned a lot here.) May be worth checking it if you haven't looked at it in a couple of years.

There should be some movement of the engine when changing from D to R with a bit of gas. On my wife's Impala, I would never guess it had a bad motor mount until one day on the interstate I did a quick pull down to 2nd gear to help stop for a brake-light fest in front of me. When I did that, I heard the tell-tale "clunk" that means a bad motor mount. Got home and tried to figure out which one it was and couldn't tell. So, it's still in there.