I am working on a 97 accord, about to put a new engine in. I normally work on subaru's as a hobby and my mind is just blown how it seems that the honda engine/trans is basically only held in with the two side mounts and it suspends there horizontally in open air. I guess the front/rear are not load bearing (maybe the rear is). Maybe this thread/post is a conjecture fest, but is anyone else surprised how well this works? is this standard design for FWD vehicles?

 

The front and rear mounts are the engines tq mounts. The two side mounts are the ones that hold the engines weight. Depending on what model Accord you have the rear mount is hydraulic with a vacuum solenoid to adjust it's stiffness. It performs very well in these chassis. The other FWD cars that I have worked on share similar engine mount designs.

 

if I'm not mistaken, even big american V8 pretty much goes in with a mount on either side of the block and some crossmember to hold the tail end of the transmission. so that's only 3 mounts for something that may have 4 times the torque of the typical FWD honda. It's all in the careful design of the system.

engineering is fun.