2017 Ridgeline Revealed

I am in the market . So far I am down to 2.7 eco F150. I had high hopes with Taco but lack of leg room in rear with 3 kids, crroked tranny and not so good mileage has turned me off. I saw ridgeline in person. Other than those fancy options it offers, to me it looked ugly. wheels are kinda look small, front nose is like a crv , I will pass on this. Ranger is not in sight till next year (may be)

 

TFL video with some good tidbits. Since the cab and bed are integral, Honda actually tests for cargo intrusion into the rear bulkhead in a collision. Interesting to see Honda also tooting the virtues of sheet molding compound (SMC) bed in a rock-drop test.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xmnsy54Ohmk
It'll be interesting to see how durable the rear diff is after a few years of real-world use, since torque vectoring is achieved by continuous-slip in the diff.

 

Good comment. By the end UTE was all I kept thinking.

The exciters are basically the same thing they have on the old RC Tacoma in the roof. It won't give you that great a sound unless the material is in pristine shape which, being an exposed bed, it won't be in a few years.

The offroad demo was hilarious. It reminded me of the demo they did for Jeep with the Patriot crossed with a Subaru closed course. How deep was that water? 2 inches?

 

It'll probably be like the 1st gen constant vectoring systems BMW and Subaru used that lead to them becoming some of the most leased models on the market. Everyone loved the control on road but no one loved replacing everything in the AWD system at 100k.

 

The Ridgeline has some neat ideas but they suck at styling. It looks like a Honda minivan with a little truck bed. I actually, for the hell of it, looked at the older Honda Ridgeline and it was very roomy inside, the backseats folded up out of the way. I like the trunk under the bed. But the performance was weak and it's a poor 4x4 offroad. A lot of people would say the Ridgeline is not a real truck and many would call you a bitch for owning one. To me, it's more of a SUV crossover like the Subaru Baja.

 

The Ridgeline is just the Pilot with a bed. The reviewer, presenter, and self admitted fanboy all said just as much. I love how the explanation behind the dial-less radio was that they had to share parts with the Pilot .

 

We'll see. The previous-gen MDX avoided the durability concern by having a very complicated rear diff with three planetary gearsets to accelerate the outside wheel (like having a mini 3-speed tranny in the diff). To save money, the new-gen MDX, Pilot and Ridgeline now have the simpler constant-slip design. However, lubricant- and carbon/aramid friction clutch material tech have advanced over the last few years.

Indeed the 2016 MDX and Pilot call for a new "Honda DPSF-ll" fluid in the owner's manual that is different than prev-gen. Change interval is pretty short, too, at 7500 mi initially (break-in?) and every 15,000 mi thereafter: http://techinfo.honda.com/rjanisis/pubs/OM/AH/ATG71616OM/enu/ATG71616OM.pdf

 

Agreed. With anything constant slip though it's a question of when it will fail, not if. Most versions fail within 5 years of conventional use. At least that's what I was told by someone with an old Subaru.

 

Out of curiosity, which Subaru model had a slip-based torque vectoring system? The current system in the WRX just brakes the inside wheel (i.e. it's a more nuanced application of VSC) so it isn't true torque vectoring, which requires accelerating the outside wheel. http://dp.subaru.com/dp12-1-active-torque-vectoring

 

I'd have to ask him.

I'm talking about an old conversation here. Basically I was bitching about how the twin clutch setup in a rental Ford I was driving seemed to be having issues (it's now a common complaint in the new Focus if it hiccups). He countered back that some Subaru's and BMW's basically have a timer on how long it is before the car costs you over 1K. He went on to describe that it was because their AWD system depended on a clutch based system that basically had slip built in to function, and thus wear was encounter in any task where the system had to vary output (this happens whenever you turn your car, even if you never actually slip).

I suspect that he was being honest since at that time he worked as a finance manager in his dads Mazda/Subaru dealership. His comment was that they leased more Subaru's over Mazda's because people who had older Subaru's had been burned with maintenance even know the new models didn't have the same problem.

 

A close friend of mine owns the old ridgeline and though I'm not a huge fan, I absolutely love the bed trunk. Good god I wish I could have it on my Tacoma. By FAR the most practical thing ever placed on a truck

 

^You can always add a swingcase or two. They have as much space as the RamBox.

Only the Ridgeline can do the in-bed trunk because the rear diff sits very low (with ensuing low ground clearance), which allows the compact spare to be sandwiched in the space between the bed and the rear diff. The Ridgeline's bed is also shallow with a high floor, as evidenced by the little fender well protrusion.

 

I will sacrifice a spare tire to get the bed trunk. Don't mind shallow bed either

 

^But would you sacrifice a solid rear axle and 6" of ground clearance?

 

BTW, this is my "in-bed trunk":

 

Again, not saying this with any offense intended, but the Ridgeline is designed for your average in town drive who REALLY likes the look of a truck but needs the abilities and ride of a CUV.

That box trunk also puts the spare in under the box... which sucks if you haul gear in your box a lot and happen to have a flat.

 

I trust that the engineers can make it work. Plenty of room behind the axle.

 

The bed trunk is situated behind the rear axle, not on top. The spare tire compartment is over the axle.

I'm not particularly fond of the bed trunk personally. I would have a tonneau cover anyway, so I would probably never use it. And it certainly does make it difficult to get to your spare if you have a load in the bed.

 

If you had the bed trunk you would not need a tonneau. I don't understand the purpose of them anyway. I hate tonneau covers almost as much as caps

 

When you live in snow country, you want something covering your bed. It's a major PITA to shovel out the bed anytime it snows. With a tonneau, you just push the snow right off. And I can still open the tailgate with the tonneau covered in snow. Can't open the trunk when the bed is full of snow.
Plus I can fit much larger items under a tonneau than I could in the trunk.