Heavy Duty Transfer Box Rubber Mounts

The standard Jimny rubber mounts are notoriously weak when the Jimny is used in anger offroad. It is common to break one, you find your transfer box lever suddenly leans to one side or the stick seems to disappear into the floor and everything shakes and rattles.

In the early days of modifying Jimny's, everyone developed Polybush style heavy duty mounts. Indeed I have a set of mounts which were early production models from Off-road armoury. However, the material used in Polybush items or variants is hard and unforgiving. Yes, it is long lasting and tough but it does not lend itself to comfort. That is why I got rid of my caster correction bushes in the radius arms and went back to rubber based ones, to improve the ride.

The same can be said of the transfer box. The heavy duty polybush style mounts on mine have lasted well but they transmit every vibration and bump onto the chassis and body work.  

So as part of my rebuild it is time to replace them and try and reduce the cabin noise. Dave over at zookbob (www.zookbob.com) or his Ebay store sells a nice set of rubber based heavy duty mounts. In the third picture you can see one alongside the older heavy duty bush.

There is not a lot to say about fitting them. I simply unbolted the old ones and then inserted the new large bushes and bolted the whole lot together. However, it was difficult to get the nut started on the thread as the rubber was uncompressed. I simply used a G-clamp to apply a small bit of compression so the nut would start on the thread cleanly.

As you can see, the mount is fitted with the two large bushes forming the core onto which the transfer box metal mounting arm rests. The nut, bolt, washers and thin rubber mount then form the outer sandwich to bolt the whole assembly together. 

So an easy to fit product from Dave, now to test it on the road this weekend.