Racingline Subframe Mount for Pre MQB VW/Audi Vehicles

To harness your power increases, and transfer that power to the road or track where you need it, Racingline Performance Engine Mounts will give a much more solid drive, and crucially give additional durability.

The Racingline Performance Engine Mounts are certainly not one of the most exciting or visual modifications that you can do to your car! But they are truly one of the most worthwhile for anyone who appreciates the driving dynamics of their car. 

What do they do?

The whole engine and gearbox are located in only three places. One at the engine-side plus another at the end of the gearbox which supports the weight of the whole drivetrain, plus a third torque arm underneath the engine to contain the fore-aft movement (often called the pendulum or dog-bone mount).

The standard car uses very compliant rubber in these mounts to give a soft take-up of power and isolate the cabin from drivetrain noise. For a daily driven standard car, these bushings do a good job of keeping cabin vibration to a minimum. But when you ask more of these mounts, with a higher power or hard driving, the flex in the bushes becomes very noticeable. This gives a slightly loose feeling to the drivetrain and an increased chance of wheel-hop under hard acceleration as the whole engine and box assembly judders.

If your car produces high power, or has covered quite a few road miles, or is driven hard, the softness of these three standard rubber mounts allows more and more movement as you come on and off the power. With worn mounts, we have even seen failures of the exhaust manifold and driveshafts as the whole drivetrain shifts around under load.

Why should you care?

The Racingline Performance engine mounts stiffen the whole location of the drivetrain greatly to give a much crisper feeling to your car. This means no more jerky behaviour on and off the throttle or when you change gear, and all but eliminates wheel hop off the line. Of course, a bit more noise from the drivetrain comes into the cabin, but most keen drivers love the sense that they are more connected to their car.

As opposed to some aftermarket push in bushes that crudely fill the voids in the factory mounts, the Volkswagen units are completely redesigned replacement mount assemblies. We specify a stiff urethane of 75A durometer which allows some movement within the mounts, and filters much of the drivetrains vibration but with a design that very significantly reduces the movement on each.

For most road cars, we recommend the lower engine mount on its own, leaving the two upper mounts standard. This makes a huge difference to how the car drives and is a pretty minimal difference to the cabin refinement. For more heavily modified vehicles or track/motorsports builds, all three mounts should be upgraded.