Begin rant:

My goal for xmas eve was replacing the side engine motor mount, VTC oil valve, and a ground strap. Simple enough, right?

The VTC valve I went OEM (or rather Hitachi the OE supplier), but for the mounts I went with Anchor - I had heard of them previously and Rock Auto had a good deal on a bundle of all four mounts. At just under $200 for the kit it was considerably cheaper than OEM which would have ran $700-$1000,

The job was going swimmingly with all the usual challenges but nothing major. However the first sign of trouble appeared when installing the new mount: one of the two little M6 bolts holding the vacuum pump / power steering bracket was super tight to get in. The other one went in just fine so probably a manufacturing error. Not a huge deal but this was only the beginning...



Next it was time to bolt the mount to the frame. One of the bolts just wasn't going in despite a good coating of PB... turns out one of the mounting holes was too small.




My roommate on the assist...



I thought I was out of the woods, but no such luck... after installing the engine mount bracket, I noticed the little nipple on the mount wasn't lining up with the hole on the bracket. Sure enough it's a few mm off on the Anchor mount...




So after all that, I'm gonna have to take the entire goddamn mount out again just to file down that stupid nipple because these dumbasses couldn't correctly make a part to spec.

I dunno - I get that I paid a lot less than OEM, and quality isn't expected to be as good. But why the hell can't these companies at least make the parts correctly? This is by no means the first time that I've had to modify a brand new part just to get it to fit. Unreal.

I know it's not a huge deal in the grand scheme of things... first world problems and all that. But c'mon, guys you had ONE JOB.

And this is why we can't have nice things. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.