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Thu May 15, 2014
18:35

I had purchased a VF Engineering "pendulum" transmission mount from the good people at ECS Tuning a while back, and I finally felt good enough (after a recent neck injury) to install it. The 3.2 VR6 in the R32 makes a bunch of torque, so those factory rubber mounts take a real beating. Soft and unpredictable throttle response, lurchy downshifts, and less-than-crisp upshifts can all result from this. I don't know what the DSG R32s felt like when they were new, but I know what mine (with 96,000 miles on it) felt like when I got it. I had chalked up the strange throttle response to it being drive-by-wire, but the lurchy downshifts were especially annoying. The VF Engineering mount, shown below, uses a polyurethane insert to fill up the voids in the factory rubber mount on the chassis side, to increase rigidity. I bought the full mount, which includes the aluminum "pendulum" parts, fitted with polyurethane bushings:

VF Engineering Mount

It was a breeze to install - it only took about an hour, and that was with the kids "helping". To install the poly insert, I greased it up with a little bit of petroleum jelly and tapped it into place with a rubber mallet. If you're just doing this one mount, supporting the engine isn't necessary (but it can help the bolts come out a bit easier), this mount only keeps the motor from rocking back and forth on the other remaining mounts. I needed to use a jack to crowd the engine just a bit to get the holes to line up when installing the new mount.

The mount made a very noticeable difference. The throttle response is definitely sharper, downshifts are amazingly good now, and upshifts are a little bit more crisp. I noticed absolutely no difference in vibrations or harshness coming through the chassis.



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