Learn me OPPO.

"V12 Jake- Hittin' Switches" (jbv12) 09/14/2015 at 19:11 • Filed to: None

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Does anyone have any experience with the first gen acura rl ?

jjhats > V12 Jake- Hittin' Switches 09/14/2015 at 19:13

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I have nothing to say other than I love these. They look like a Japanese e38 ripoff. Perfect proportions prolly honda reliability blah blah honda automatics suck blah blah

Textured Soy Protein > V12 Jake- Hittin' Switches 09/14/2015 at 19:17

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My grandpa had one after a Mercury Grand Marquis and before a Toyota Avalon.

Fun fact: the 1st-gen RL, along with the Vigor, 1st-gen TL, and 2nd-gen Legend, all have longitudinally-mounted engines even though they are fwd.

My citroen won't start > V12 Jake- Hittin' Switches 09/14/2015 at 19:18

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Japanese Merc.

I like

The facelift version looks nice, the other one no.

Bytemite > Textured Soy Protein 09/14/2015 at 20:00

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Is it front mid mounted or overhang mounted?

sm70- why not Duesenberg? > V12 Jake- Hittin' Switches 09/14/2015 at 20:19

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They are much more reliable and economical (as well as less expensive) than their competition. They are also reasonably handsome, if a bit dull. They are, however, slower, smaller, less well equipped, and generally slightly “down market” of their period competition. As a used buy, especially for a comfy long-distance commuter, I would say it’s a very solid choice. If you don’t mind RWD and worse fuel economy, however, the Lexus LS essentially kicks its keister in most ways.

PotbellyJoe and 42 others > V12 Jake- Hittin' Switches 09/14/2015 at 20:27

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Solid as hell and kept around for ages so if you need parts, junkyards are a great place to start. Although you won’t need many. They were the ultimate Consumer Reports car... well until the Tesla came along.

They are not fast, not sporty, but they are ridiculous stout.

Textured Soy Protein > Bytemite 09/14/2015 at 20:34

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The strut towers are pretty much right at the mid-point of the engine. This is a 2nd-gen Legend’s engine bay.

Honda used some kind of funky transaxle in the cars with this layout, where the transaxle attached to the rear of the engine and sticks toward the back of the car, but the differential is actually at the front of the transaxle, underneath the engine. One of the half-shafts went through the oil pan.

The flywheel and torque converter are right at the middle of the KHIart.com watermark in this picture, and you can see how the differential is actually in front of there, under the engine.

415s30 W123TSXWaggoIIIIIIo ( •_•))°) > V12 Jake- Hittin' Switches 09/14/2015 at 20:43

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Get one of these, if you can find one. Yum

Bytemite > Textured Soy Protein 09/14/2015 at 21:16

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That is some funky engineering...

They rerouted the power 180 degrees and then another 90 degrees. For what? A little less worse weight distribution?

I’m guessing they couldn’t mount the engine the other way around because that would take up to much cabin room.

Instead of going through all that trouble, they should have just made it RWD.

Textured Soy Protein > Bytemite 09/15/2015 at 00:50

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I’m not an engineer, but I don’t think having the output shaft come out the front of the transmission instead of the back like in rwd makes much difference in driveline power loss.

If you look at the diagram, the output shaft is the thing going from the differential to sort of the middle of the transmission. Imagine if that shaft instead poked out the back of the transmission and hooked up to a driveshaft. There’s not really any additional parts to spin, and getting the shaft to spin in the right direction for fwd vs. rwd is really just the shape of the gear teeth. So I dunno, maybe it’s a little less efficient than a rwd layout, but then again the output shaft is a lot less mass to spin up than a whole rwd driveshaft.

One thing this layout does accomplish is give a much more rwd-like dash-to-axle ratio , which effectively is pushing the front axle farther forward in the car, for a longer wheelbase, and better ride and turn-in response. It also makes for less front overhang, which generally seems more “natural” than big fwd transverse front overhangs.

If you look at the Acura longitudinal fwd cars vs. their transverse successors, you can see how the front wheels on the longitudinal cars are much farther forward. For example:

2nd-gen Legend/1st-gen RL (longitudinal) vs. 2nd-gen RL (transverse)

Vigor/1st-gen TL (longitudinal) vs. 2nd/3rd-gen TL (transverse)

I would argue that the front end styling and proportions are much better on the longitudinal cars with their nice big dash-to-axle ratios, as opposed to the later transverse cars that have the front wheels shoved way under the car.

Here’s one more comparison: look at the proportions of the 2nd gen Legend, Vigor, and Honda Accord of the same era. They all look very similar, but check where the front axle is on the longitudinal Acuras vs. the transverse Accord.

This Accord doesn’t have the cab-forward proportions of the later transverse Acuras, and it arguably hides its fwd-ness better than those cars, but next to the longitudinal Acuras, you can definitely see the difference.

Audi uses a similar longitudinal fwd layout on a lot of their cars, except in their case the packaging of the differential is not done the same as Honda used to, which pushes the engine much farther forward in the car.

Bytemite > Textured Soy Protein 09/15/2015 at 01:28

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Yeah, what I’m saying is there is an extra change in rotation that a RWD car would not have. The shaft that is connected to the final gear and to the middle of the tranny is spinning at the opposite rotation to the transmission. There has got to be some power loss there.

Also, I’m just intrigued why Honda would go through the trouble of designing such a set up instead of making their cars RWD. Maybe then their cars wouldn’t be so nose-heavy. Sure they did get past the horrible FWD dash-to-axle ratio like I see in your examples, but I just think it would have been easier and better to drive the right wheels.

It is kind of like...designing a clever way to walk on hands than just walk on feet. Like, okay you made it so walking on hands isn’t completely crap, but why aren’t we just walking?