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Bolting on the RL Spindles, A-Arms, and Brakes to the Civic

With the Acura RL Sub frame in and mounted many people have asked me why I painted it?  That is not painted.  Acura actually put a lot of effort into its flagship sedan, the RL, and tried to make it as light as possible.  As such, the entire sub frame and most of its sprung weight components are aluminum.  So to be more specific, the sub frame, spindles, lower A-arm, upper A-Arm, and steering rack mounts are all aluminum.  Now to be fair I am not saving any weight in this department, in fact all of these items are heavier than the Honda Civic Components they are replacing, but they are SO MUCH STRONGER!  I am going to be very interested to see how much more stiff the entire chassis is going to be with that sub frame under the front end basically boxing in the front area.

Being that I brought the whole sub frame over from the RL this step really wasn’t that hard.  It was one of the MANY reasons I decided to use the entire sub frame.  The lower A-arms bolt directly to the sub frame so there was no fabrication there.   The upper A-arms will most likely require modification in the future to get the camber angles correct and to get a proper arc angle and camber gain as the suspension travels through its arc.  For now I just bolted it on to get an idea of what I was working with. 

I then bolted on the spindles with the MONSTER RL brakes.  Big brakes are great right?  Well I go back and forth about this all the time.  While the brakes are HUGE they weight an absolute ton.  Holding the spindle and brakes of the civic they weight nothing, maybe 20 lbs.  The RL spindle, rotor, and brakes have to be close to 50 lbs each.  They are SO HEAVY.  I almost threw out my back the first time I went to pick them up having just removed the little civic spindle and brakes.  I would assume it is the rotors since the brakes are aluminum and so are the spindles.  The rotors are such a massive chunk of steel that it’s not too big of a surprise how heavy they are.  It really is just plain overkill for the car.   While the 14” rotors look sweet, they will require me to run a 17” wheel, which in my opinion, looks terrible on an older civic.  I could do 16” but 17” just removes all the sidewall on the tire and really messes with the look of the car in a way I don’t agree with. (Sorry to all those with 17” wheels on your older car)  There are no options out there for a different brake set-up since no one is modifying Acura RL’s, and if they are, the brakes are plenty adequate on that car so no one is messing with them.  Much further along in the build I may consider modify the brakes to accept a smaller rotor and brake set-up so that I can use a 16” wheel.

Last I wanted to see what it would look like with a wheel, but all I have for wheels that are 5x120 and are 17” are the wheels from the Acura RL donor car.  Well those wheels and tires have an overall height of 27”, while the stock civic ran 22” I think?  So for fun I bolted on the RL wheels.  It doesn’t even look right, and I can’t turn them without it hitting the body of the car.  Oversized is an understatement.  Gives me hope that the project is coming along though.