Well guys after much debating on what exactly I was going to do, to try and lower my 1st gen RL I came up wih this.


Since the G2 Legends struts will physically bolt onto the RL I figured this would be the easiest and net be the best results. I personally did not want to go full coilover since I need comfort. Not to say you cant get a comfortable ride with coilovers but I need a softer ride. I didnt want to go full airbag cause I need my trunk space and didnt have that kind of cash either.


I wanted to use my stock 2002-04 springs since the ride was comfortable, yet sporty. So basicly after 40 dollars of machining, a pair of new konis for a G2 Legend, and a pair of oem G2 Acura front shocks I achaived my desired result with a good ride.


So parts needed are:

G2 Legend Koni struts (all four)
G2 Legend front picnchforks
G2 Legend OEM Acura front struts ( dont need all of it but will explain later)
Good machinist for a small machining job (Koni will also machine if bought straight from them)




For anyone who doest know, Koni shocks are height adjustable. Basicly there is a small snap ring in a groove on the strut body that the spring perch sits on top of. There are several of these grooves to allow to adjust ride height. Usually only 2 grooves in the front (normal and sport) and three grooves in the rear.(towing/normal/sport)



Lets start with the rear Konis.

They will bolt up to the RL no problems. You simply use your RL springs and tophats. Here is the deal though. If you use the lowest spring perch position (sport) of the G2 konis it will only lower the rear of the RL about a 1/4" instead of the 5/8" it does on the G2 Legend. Heres a quick comparison pic.





The actual strut body is almost exactly the same size between the RL and the G2 Legend. Theres only a slight difference. The G2 has about 3/8" more travel on the shaft, and about 1/8" taller from mounting point to the top of the strut body. Very slight difference and nothing to worry about.








So now I didnt want to lower my car 1/4" in the rear so here is where a good local machinist comes in. You basicly decide how much lower you want your RL to sit from the lower mark and have a machinist make another groove or multiple grooves depending if you are unsure. I personally wouldnt go much more than what I did since anything over say 1.25" lower will cause the spring to be loose when the suspension is fully decompressed.


Here is a picture of the grooves that I had added





The 3 grooves spaced far apart towards the left are the original grooves on the koni rear and the 2 close grooves (one has snap ring in it) towards the right are the ones I had a machinist do. One is 1/2" and the other is 3/4" from the lowest original groove that only lowers the rear 1/4". So I effectively made marks that would lower the rear of the car 3/4' and 1" on the rear.


So after you decide where you want your perch to be, its reassembly as stock. There is only one thing extra that needs to be done. The bumpstops need opened up in the middle since the shaft on the G2 konis is thicker than the OEM RL rear struts. The rear bottom mount is the same size as the RL. No need to purchase or swap bushings.



One extra tidbit of info and Thanks go out to onebadna1nsx for verifying this. Contrary to what the PDF manual says you do NOT need to take off the rear seat to remove the rear struts. You CAN infact only remove the speaker covers since they simply pop off to give you access to the top of the struts.(after you remove the speakers also) Here is a quick pic to see where the clips are.








Now onto the fronts.



The fronts are a little more complicated since you need to source a set of OEM Acura G2 Legend front struts to get pieces off of. The G2 Legend front struts a physically the same exact size as the RL struts minus the fact the G2's are thicker along with having a beefier pinch fork. The brake line bracket is exactly the same as are the vertical dimensions.

That being said using the "Normal" perch on the front Konis will have your RL sitting at the correct stock height. Using the sport perch will indeed lower your front an inch as advertised by Koni for the G2 Legend.


Now for the hard part. The front Konis do not come with the spring perch or brake line bracket. (hate this design) So these need to be had off the OEM G2 Legend front struts along with the pinchforks. If you can you can just go to the j/y and remove the brackets and pinchfork instead of buying the whole struts. (usually more expensive but need to take a spring compressor)

The Konis come with cheesy instructions on how to remove the oem Legend brake line and spring perch off the oem strut. Here is the basic jist of it though.



After the spring is removed and you only have the oem Legend strut in your hand.


Place the strut upright and hammer the brake bracket down off of the strut.


Place the strut upside down and hammer the spring perch down off the strut.(theres a small gold cap that gets hamered off too)






After that you can put these on the Konis. I personally had more grooves machined in my front Konis since i didnt want just an inch of drop. You also need to bore out the bumpstop again.

Reassemble everything using the RL parts and there you go. That is it.


I personally lowered the rear 1" and the front 1-1/2".


Here is a before:








and heres a quick after using my cell phone:






I wil lget better pics once the car is washed since its been raining everyday and its extremely dirty right now.



Well thats it. The ride is good, a little stiffer than OEM 2002-04 struts but a smooth ride none the less.

The body by itself was only lowered 1" front and 3/4" rear when measure from the side jack points.


I dont know if anyones done this before but since my searches turned up nothing I figured I would share.