I have decided to step up to something Japanese for my next DD. In my Craigslist searches, there will be an Acura CL pop up every once in a while and it has me interested in buying one. One reason is parts are dirt cheap and plentiful. Two is they look so damn nice inside.
I am particularly interested in the 4 cylinder, 5 speed CL. Does anyone have any personal experience with these? Anything I need to be aware of or specific problems?
Mucho gracias
The Acura CL is to Accord Coupe as Lexus e300 is to Toyota Camry.
Hard to go wrong.
The biggest thing is it's now 15 years old. It probably needs new ball joints front/rear and a timing belt because I'm fairly certain the lst 2 or 3 owners have put it off.
Other than that, they are decent cars. Find one without rust will be the hardest thing.
I've seen them going for $1500 here in good nick, which is about the same as a mid 90s Integra. I'm not interested in performance, only interested in fuel efficiency.
I've always been interested in what can be done with a CL. Mainly a 4cly/5spd, since the V6 only came with an automatic which is usually dead.
Nitroracer wrote: I've always been interested in what can be done with a CL. Mainly a 4cly/5spd, since the V6 only came with an automatic which is usually dead.
You could swap in a Prelude transmission for better gearing/limited slip and build a better head for the F22. Or just turbo the F22. You can basically do the same things to the F series engines as the other Honda 4 cylinder engines. It just costs more.
You can swap the current SOHC 4 cylinder engine for a "Prelude-spec" DOHC engine and transmisssion. There is about 145 horsepower to the current engine, while a Prelude's engine puts out 195 horses. This is almost a "plug and play" in an Accord, not sure how much different the CL is from the Accord under the hood.
any "camber" issues? I hear of people putting some camber kit on the rear to help with wear
My best friend had the 3.0/auto for a couple of years. He dearly loved that car, but when the trans gave up he moved on. I'll have to ask him if there's anything chassis-specific he had to deal with. I don't think there was though. From the outside looking in, seemed like an anvil until the transmission puked.
Yeah, once a honda auto breaks you are pretty much spending what the car was worth to get another one, unless you go used.
In reply to Matt B and Vigo: Yea, that's why I want to avoid the 3.0s. I know first hand about those auto trans kicking the bucket. Rather stick with the 4 cylinder for fuel efficiency and a stick to keep me entertained 
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