Entire Engine drops out of Vehicle (1 Viewer)

[DeanC]

Anyone ever have this happen to them? In my 90 Cutlass Supreme driving on the Freeway on ramp, my vehicle jumps and my car is has raised and just goes dead, the vehicles behind me know what has happened so stops

Call a tow truck or 2 to help tow the engine and vehicle. I just decide to temporary get some dogbone shaped clamps to put the engine back.

 

[Holadem]

Ha!

I thought a spark plug shooting out of my engine and firmly lodging itself into the air intake assembly some weeks ago was freaky enough, but this...

Good luck!

--
H

 

[David McGough]

Id say it musta come loose

 

[Joey Skinner]

You must have had some kind of warning that something was wrong. I can't imagine all the motor and transmision mounts simultaneously failing in a catastrophic manner.

 

[Steve Schaffer]

It's been my experience (34 years this June) that engines don't just fall out of cars without some prior indication that motor mounts are going bad. Usually this manifests in the form of increased engine vibration at idle in D or clunking noises when shifting from D to R or vice versa.

It's also been my experience that some people will ignore funny noises or klunks until a catastrophic failure occurs, or will keep on driving a car with the temp guage pegged on hot until the motor fries.

Of course, on a 90 model car this could possibly, and just possibly, have occured due to rust in the structure to which the engine mounts are attached. Here in CA we don't see that so I can only surmise that in harsher climates it might happen.

 

[Joey Skinner]

I hope the "dogbone shaped clamps to put the engine back" works out OK for him.

 

[Eric Kahn]

Dean, where do you live and what is your license plate number, I want to make sure I am never following you, you ignored a problem for a long time for this to happen

 

[Steve Schaffer]

The GM W-body cars (88-mid 90's Cutlass, Regal, Lumina, and Grand Prix) had dogbone shaped stay(s) mounted between brackets bolted to the transversely mounted engine and the crossmemember above the radiator. The purpose of these was to limit the rocking motion of the engine under torque loads because the actual mounts themselves were relatively soft to absorb vibration. They usually had to be unbolted and the engine rocked forward with a pry bar to change the back bank of sparkplugs on the V6 models. They are not designed to support the engine at all, only to limit it's sideways motion on the real mounts. This sideways motion needs to be limited partially to keep too much flexing from occuring in the exhaust pipe as the exhaust on a transverse engine car exits at a 90 degree angle from the engine's rocking motion.

Most fwd cars with transverse engines employ a variation on these "dogbone" thingies, though not all require their removal to get at the sparkplugs and not all are located at the same place as on the GM W-body cars.

there are rubber bushings at each end of these dogbones, and usually this rubber will fail and allow clunking noises as torque loads change suddenly. This is the first sign that all the motor mounts should be changed.

 

[Dave Poehlman]

Sorry.. just had to do it.