Hi folks. I've got 2 years and probably 40k miles on Welsh shock mounts, and one of them has expired. Is that to be expected?

 

About what I saw.

John

 

Ours were installed in early January 2016 and now have approximately 21,000 miles on them. Still performing perfectly....

 

I would have hoped these would last longer than that. I’m putting a set in my XK8 this weekend (weather permitting).

 

Welsh did sell the old foam mounts before they came out the the poly version.

Just want to get clarified which mounts you have. Poly for sure? They are the black ones.

Any chance you took an unusually hard hit to the suspension on one side, like a deep pothole or unexpected speed bump? Those can sometimes be upper mount killers.

 

They are the poly mounts, and my car is no stranger to potholes! It's just discouraging to have to put that project back on the to - do list.

 

Can you take some pics of each side when you pull them out?

I don't think we should toss Welsh under the bus if only one side collapsed. Even poly is not indestructible.

I do feel your pain about the re-do. I went through that with the foam versions.

Maybe think of it as opportunity to replace some bushings while you are that deep into it. Yeah, that's it...it's opportunity!

 

Frankly, I have about a dozen other opportunities I'd rather be working on!

 

Today while I was prepping for my wheel swap I checked my Welsh mounts. Still looking good. Installed on 1/28/2016. Now have about 40K miles on them.

 

Crazy. Just did a search for shock mount to see the life on these welsh mounts. Mine are a few years old and they are off center are starting to crumble. I hit a nasty pothole and that started this inquiry. Ugh. Better than the foam though.

 

I feel your pain bro. I just got the rear end of my car Quieted down, and now the front end is going out again.

I'm seriously considering dumping the XKR and going back to a 928 again. I'll miss the grunt of the R, but will be much happier with a vastly improved lighting at night, and just the general feeling of taughtness and control you have in the Porsche.

 

That nasty pothole probably would have destroyed most any polymer based mount. Welsh still seems to be our best (only) option at this point.

Once again I am feeling lucky to live where the roads are rarely rough - much less nasty. Yeah we may have our voting issues here in FL but the roads to the polls are always smooth.

 

I wonder why they don't sell rear poly's. Or am I missing something

 

For whatever reason the OEM rear shock mount "foam doughnuts" do not degrade nearly as severely as the OEM front shock mounts do. Wayne (cjd777) and I discovered this when we replaced the rear shocks in my wife's 2006 XK8 in October 2014. Although the factory rear shock mounts still looked serviceable, we went ahead and installed new ones along with the new Bilstein shocks....

 

A while back I did email Welsh to ask that very question. Got no response. So I ended up using foam type when I did the rear ones.

 

they do. Or they did. Black dog has a set of poly insulators and shock bushings. I don't think anyone trusted them due to the meltbonic plague that we all saw with those front bushings. They might not even be listed anymore

 

^^ Agreed. If you go poly, stick with Welsh....

 

While I was working on other stuff behind the fender liner I got another good pic of the Welsh mount. Still looks like new after almost 3 years and 40K+ miles. Figured it was worth posting an update.

 

lucky dog.

After that pothole that seemed to be the last straw for mine.


all in all I think I got about 5 years/50k out of mine. Not a bad run. The uro foams I got barely lasted more than a year before that

 

After this run I think I'm done messing around with this aftermarket stuff. Just a disaster job getting these swapped from that dreaded fulcrum pin lockup, the top shock nut being frozen in non rusty southeast. Not a job that I look forward to in a few years.

A guy that I cant think of off the top of my head bought some bushing pucks from a company called re suspension and these remind a friend of mine of the oem 308 upper bushings when he worked for Jaguar.They seem to be top notch quality. The urethane bushings keep coming back on the 308s for the cold weather rattle knock etc. Its just not a feasible option on those cars.

For these X100 cars it seems like our best option but is it worth doing every 5 years in a state that has terrible roads? Not for me. Maybe re suspension can build some bushings but I'm over it if there isn't a foam option I'll just pay as much for the oem mounts as i do for cats shocks. I got 10+ years out of that oem foam.