I was able to carve out a few hours this morning with a buddy to replace my broken driver side motor mount. The old one was almost completely ripped in half. I'd prepped by watching a bunch of videos on it, and picked what I thought was the easiest method. We went in from above, removing the steering shaft and exhaust manifold heat shield. We had to rip apart the mount heat shield to make room. My buddy is 4 inches taller than me, and has longer arms. So he reached the rear two mount-to-block bolts. If I were to do it solo, I'd have put it on jack stands and removed the front wheel to access those bolts. Overall it wasn't terrible. Total time was under 2 hours.
The truck is much better now. No more clunk when taking off. And if the H3 mount transmits more NVH than the stock Denali one, I sure can't tell. We saved the other side for another day, as weather is moving in, and we had family coming to see my dying MIL.
I found my exhaust leak, too. The rear most driver side manifold bolt is broken off. It HAD to be that one, of course. Thankfully my buddy does lots of car repair and is a much better welder than I am. We've made a plan to fix it when we have more time.
New H3 mount vs. old torn one:
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Close-up of torn one. Thanks GM.
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Lastly I got to break in my new cordless ratchet. It's a cheap knockoff of a Milwaukee. But it got good reviews. It worked like a champ, saving a bunch of time spent hunched over the radiator support.
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