87 Celica ST motor mount questions.

[zoneoneoni]

Hello, I recently picked up a 1987 Toyota Celica ST with fairly low miles and in pretty decent condition for a fair price but had a few questions about the motor mounts on the car. I have some basic mechanic experience with my previous car (A Nissan 240sx w/SR20DET swap) and a garage full of tools ready to fix any problem.

Anyways, let me get to the point, the Celica I purchased has some vibrating issues from inside the car. The car only really vibrates when I come to a complete stop, not when I am accelerating, and the vibrating is coming from the right side of the engine bay almost. That being said, I suspected that my motor mounts were in poor shape, considering the vibration and the feeling of the engine. So a few of my questions were...

-I've found a couple mounts online for about 25-40 a piece but I am unsure as of the number of mounts supporting the engine. How many motor mounts does this vehicle require?
-I did a little bit of reading up on how to replace the motor mounts and there seems to be a couple methods on how to do it, one of the methods being lifting the engine up with a cherry picker, and the other method using a block of wood on top of a car jack and using a sturdy point underneath the engine to jack it up enough to get the motor mounts out. Is the block of wood method okay to use on this car?
-Last and final question, what is a average cost for a mechanic to charge labor on a job like this?

Thank you for reading, sorry about the wall of text! Haha.

[christine_lives!]

Should be 4 in all. The upper mounts are left and right, the lowers front and rear. You can replace the lower ones without extra support, I used a jack stand just as a mental precaution. Then the uppers can be done one at a time using a block of wood and a jack. Fairly simple job that requires a few things to be moved out of the way first. 14mm socket and 12" extension make the job a breeze.

[Rick89GTS]

Usually it's just the front and back mounts that sag and need replacing. Inspect them; you could probably get away with leaving both side mounts.

[fredk]

You have what is called a hanger mount on each end of the powertrain one is by the timing belt and the other is on top of the trans by the wheelwell, these mounts simply hold the weight of the powertrain and let it rotate, then you have 1 or more twist mounts that keep it from rotating too far, in your case you have 2, the twist mounts are well known for getting wiped out and letting the powertrain rotate too far and hitting the metal bracket of the mount or something else nearby. put the car on level ground and in park or 1 gear and get a buddy on the back and you on front and push it back and forth and watch the powertrain rotate and look at the twist mounts with a lite and see if the exhaust or anything else is hitting anything, easy test for the hanger mounts is simply look at the valve cover to see if it is level with the cowel, it should be very close and eyeball the mounts to see if they have sagged and pushed the twist mounts off center