I have a 1996 Honda Civic CX 3 door, AT, no ABS, not VTEC I need to replace the engine mount that is just below the A/C. The engine mount is unusual in that the spokes are very thin (about 1/8 inch)and the hole in the middle of the mount is much larger than the metal "spoke" (attached to the engine) that goes through it. There are two bolts that hold the mount to the frame. The nut for the bolt closest to the rear of the car appears to be tack welded. The bolt came out with no problems. The second and last bolt is giving me much difficulty. I can't stop the nut from spinning. At first I thought that the nut should have been tack welded as the first bolt's nut had been. The nut is not readily accessible as it is inside of what appears to be a box frame. There is a possibilty that one half of the box frame could come off but it is not obvious to me how that can happen. I am wondering,now, if that second nut was NOT supposed to be tack welded. There is a second hole next to the bolt hole (for this second bolt ONLY) in both the new mount as well as the old mount. The frame has a matching hole, as well, for this second hole. So I can just catch a glimpse of the nut if I hold a light just right. Perhaps I am supposed to do something using this hole as an access hole to stop the nut from spinning. But I can not understand how to make use of this access hole. There also appears to be an access hole on top of the frame almost in line with the second bolt. However none of these access holes are large enough to put a wrench in it or a socket of the size required to hold the nut (I do not know the size but i do have the first bolt and if the bolts are the same size, then the nut must be larger than the bolt which makes both access holes too small for any type of socket). I tried the old trick of putting tension on the bolt so that the nut is drawn to the frame which, in theory, would present a friction load thus preventing the nut from turning. But if it is working, it is working very slowly. I have managed to remove some of the bolt (about 1/8 inch), but not much. I could attempt to cut the bolt, but I would still have the difficult task of figuring out how to put a new nut into the box frame. Maybe that is what the access holes are about but it seems like a difficult way to do things when all Honda had to do is tack weld the nut. I think I am missing something here. There must be a reason why I am having difficulties. Oh....I did try and remove the shield in the tire well, hoping it would give me access to the nut in the frame. But what I discovered was that the nut is boxed into a metal box frame. Perhaps the frame is really a U frame with a metal cover making it appear to be a box frame. It looks like that is a possibilty, but to remove it seems like alot of extra work as there are other components screwed into this "cover" (if it is, in fact, a cover for the beam). I appreciate the intelligence of Honda engineers. They are NOT dumb. I suspect I am missing some important information. Please....let me know if this situation is supposed to be this way (nut not tack welded) and if so then what is the procedure for removing the bolt? If the nut was supposed to be be tack welded, then does anybody have any suggestions? Thank you, Bil
