So after the past few weeks of reading all the forum posts on the RMM viability and supposed improvements that members have seen with it, I decided to finally bite the bullet and see if I could get one installed for myself. As part of my 48k free oil change/maintenance I went in to the dealership to see if they would be willing to change it for me as they'd be down there doing an oil change anyway.
Mechanic was asking for the full labor rate of $125 for a 10 minute job. Man that blows. So I decided, what the hell might as well learn to do this myself.
I've never been underneath a car, but I'm quite handy with tools and common sense (tool in itself).
Got myself 2 jacks, 2 stands, 4 wheel chokes a torque wrench and T30 driver.
First thing I did was f'k up part of the plastic underneath/beside the driver mount point. Stupid Michelin hydraulic jack slipped off the mount point and cracked the plastic side fender. Thankfully its not visible from any angle except from looking from below. On try #2 used a piece of wood to offset the jack point inwards onto the chassis for both driver and passenger.
I followed the steps shown in this thread (
http://www.focusfanatics.com/forum/showthread.php?t=319739 , Thanks ShoOff for the excellent write up) to get to the RMM. The one thing I noticed is that for some reason all my bolts were 15mm! Although the head size has no bearing on the diameter of the bolt thread itself, it's still damn weird, I hope they haven't made this kind of mistakes else where. I also found one of my Christmas-Tree Clips which I lost in the bowels of the car while doing the snorkel delete a few weeks back, Score!
All in all an easy 1.5 hour job, 50 minutes of that getting the car up onto and off the jack stands. I must say though not having a car lift makes it that much harder to screw off the bolts and torque with 55 lb-ft of force after, as you have maybe 1.5 feet of clearance at most to work with on your back under the car.
After getting everything cleaned up took the car out for a test.
Immediately I knew that this was the best decision to I've made in modding the car.
No more hesitation of the line, no more shudder, no more rubber band feel when coming to a stop and taking off as soon as you stop. No more "clunk" noise when pressing the peddle down hard. Basically its all gone!
Best of all no noticeable vibrations at all.
I love it!
I'll give it a few weeks to break in and I'll update on it, but in so far as of driving it for the past 2 hours, it feels like a new car. This is considering mine is a 2012 Job 1 bought way back in August of 2011.
Thanks to all the members who have posted their info/write ups and opinions! Without your posts I may never have worked up the will to do this!
Rock On!
Edit: Btw this is the mount I ended up using.
http://focus.c-f-m.com/cfm-performa...ount-for-2012-13-focus-and-2013-focus-st.aspx
It looks very similar to the E-Focus RMM me thinks.