Suspension top mounts

[varia]

Sachs is the OE manufacture and supply the OE replacement products found at the dealer branded as Audi parts.
They also sell replacement parts under the Sachs brand name ("OEM" Parts).
They also sell replacement parts under the Boge brand name.
I put the two mounts next to each other, other then the color they are the same, they hold up very well. Btw even them bearing number was the same

I feel this topic about these mount are highly over rated. Get a new sachs/boge mount with Mance mount saver (I will make like 50-100 sets soon) if you like the softer feeling. change it when it goes bad, its a wear item (mine lasted for quite few year before I replaced it with solid)
Or get one solid, adjustable from AK and never look back.

[Lago Blue]

Varia,

IMHO, solids are for people who think skate-boards have too much NVH suppression, or maybe perfectly-paved oval racers, I'm neither. I want a car I can take my girl away in for a long week-end or more and she won't get tired of it.

It don't feel that the 355A mounts are highly over-rated, but I do know that they at least have a rating. A rating as the most durable. The Sachs don't appear to have any rating at all. Are they a close 2nd, or a distant 3rd or exactly what good is achieved in choosing them? A visual inspection of the exterior of a top-mount is no substitute for load-testing over time. I'm glad they worked well enough for you, so well in fact that you ditched them for solids. The 355A beats all the others for load capacity over time. That's what I want, and it might also be why I haven't had to replace them. If I want to try to achieve an even more durable mount than that, the best OEM one, why would I start with anything else? If I simply want others to be able to perhaps best replicate my success, why would I reco anything other than that?

BTW:
All the Euro mount-makers use the same INA branded bearing;
Schaeffler Group house brands.png

Sachs, just like Boge is an OE supplier to Audi, and in 2016, a 3rd of Boge's business was with the VW group;
If the Sachs was truly interchangeable with the Boge, why wouldn't Audi offer them?
Since Boge has been making mounts for much longer than Sachs, if anything I'd suspect Boge makes the Sachs and not the reverse.
Sachs and Boge, for a time they were sister brands, both belonging strictly to ZF from 2001 until 2014.

[varia]

ZF owns Sachs and Boge, still

https://aftermarket.zf.com/go/en/aft...us/our-brands/

[5cylinderman]

Could someone post a photo and/or dimensions of these mount savers? I've never seen them before. I've bought new top mounts and I've a buddy with a machine shop who may be able to fashion something for me.

[Lago Blue]

Well, it's a little more complex than that. Here's a look back at some familiar names, some perhaps not.

- In 1971 Elastmetall GmbH Damme (incidentally, it's also the current location of new umbrella company ("CSR") that controls Boge for the current owners) merges with Lemförder Metallwaren AG

Lemforder early.png

- In 1977 the sale of Fichtel & Sachs to the British GKN group (you might recognize GKN Löbro GmbH) was blocked;

Fichtel & Sachs .png Lobro.png

-In 1984 ZF Friedrichshafen AG takes over majority of Lemförder Metallwaren AG

ZF.png

- In 1987 Mannesmann AG (seamless steel pipe maker) buys Fichtel & Sachs, (makers of some gorgeous bicycle components, small air-cooled W-ankel* engines (I do remember a lovely little W-ankel*-powered military gen. set), and Hercules motorcycles);

- In 1991 Mannesmann AG takes over majority of Boge AG

- In 1993 Mannesmann AG (who owned VDO, Krauss-Maffei and even had a pipe-making plant in Canada) completes takes over of Boge AG (who has made bonded rubber / metal parts since 1949), an original supplier to Porsche (a 911 strut is pictured), and the original supplier to the Audi factory of our top-mounts, A-arm bushings and original dampers), Boge’s damper business is moved to Fichtel & Sachs, Boge then focuses on rubber / metal components and bumper impact dampers;

Boge mid.png Boge strut for Porsche.png

- In 1997 Fichtel & Sachs becomes Mannesmann Sachs; and Boge GmbH becomes Mannesmann Boge GmbH;
Sachs.png

- In 2001 ZF bought Mannesmann Sachs;

ZF Sachs.png

- In 2002 ZF Friedrichshafen AG takes over the company and business activities known as Boge Vibration Control GmbH

- In 2003 ZF merges ZF Boge Elastmetall and ZF Lemforder Elastmetall;

- In 2010 the integration of ZF Boge Elastmetall GmbH in ZF Lemförder GmbH, business unit Boge Rubber & Plastics;

- In 2011 the merger of ZF Lemförder GmbH with ZF Friedrichshafen AG takes place;

"Sachs belonged to ZF Friedrichshafen as a subsidiary company (ZF Sachs AG) until 2011, when like other ZF Group subsidiaries, ZF Sachs AG was legally merged with ZF Friedrichshafen AG and the independent business units integrated into the ZF divisions."

During that 2001 to 2011 period above would have been when Mance was testing to failure various brands of top-mounts (both for endurance and peak load capacity) and first making his Mount-Savers. This is the period when both the Boge and Sachs top-mounts may have been the exact same physical part, or it may have been assumed to be. As Mance would have heard, the two company's product lines were being merged under ZF. This I believe, was the reason for Mance’s original Boge / Sachs reco, which unfortunately and incorrectly, some took to mean that any Boge or any Sachs would be suitable, despite his further specific insistence as to the particular single Audi P/N for which his Mount-Savers were meant for. Likewise, this also gets you the mount Strut-Stops are made for.

In 2014 ZF sells their Rubber & Plastics business unit (the former ZF Boge Elastmetall) to a Chinese company (TMT) which results in a new company (Boge Rubber & Plastics), and according to ZF - "ZF will continue to work together closely with (the former) Boge Elastmetall GmbH". ZF still markets Boge as a brand and offers Boge products on its' website.

Boge logo late.png

In 2014 ZF buys TRW.

Sachs and Boge (along with Lemforder and TRW) have since become "aftermarket brands”, all parts of ZF Friedrichshafen AG. Today ZF, under the Sachs name, offers those well-known clutches, dampers, has a racing division and oddly, still lists top-mounts for our cars.

ZF Friedrichshafen AG (the folks who made our steering racks and certainly for all the old air-cooled Porsches) which began as a company to make drive gears for Zeppelins, and is still headquartered down in south western Germany, is now one of the (perhaps the 2nd?) largest auto parts maker in the world, after the Robert Bosch Corp.

TMT.png CRRC.png

Plenty of western companies have opened plants in China (ZF apparently has dozens of locations there), but in a bit of turnabout as fair play, TMT (who makes windmills, and may be the world’s leading supplier of NVH products and polymer composite materials for railway vehicles), is a part of the largely state-controlled CRRC, who in turn is the world‘s largest manufacturer of railway vehicles), came to Germany and bought the former ZF Boge division in situ, and our Audi / Boge mounts are, for the time being, still made under ZF’s auspices. ZF saw declining profits in Europe and wanted to shift towards North America (ergo TRW), whereas China wants a presence in Europe no doubt for its' trains and windmills. For the time being, lucky us.


(*Note to Mods: So glad your still here today BTW. The forum auto-edit robot yanks the word w-a-n-k, even if inside another word! Who knew it's a 4-letter word, let alone even a word? Gotta be a British thing. Well it's a positively sw-a-n-ky word compared to rotating equilateral and curve-sided triangle shaped piston-engine, you oval, epitrochoid-shaped hating robot! Seeing as how NSU is part of Audi’s storied history, one ought to be able to say Dr. W-a-n-k-e-l’s name here without being censored. Let’s hope it is just this bit of programming that might soon be drifting off to somewhere in the North Atlantic!)

[Lago Blue]

5cylinderman
Of course, I've just spent a few years getting these Strut-Stops (ersatz Mount-Savers) to work, tested and now have got a few sold, I'll get right on that sir.