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so how much of your Accord is an off-the-shelf design

freddofrog

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In the early 1980's, before I got into automotive (and then telecomms) I was a "board level" electronics engineer. I designed circuits that went into production, but over 90% of what one did was to select "off-the-shelf" circuits. In those days, Texas Instruments, National Semiconductor, and many other companies had hundreds of data-sheets for all sorts of things. So you'd look at the various datasheets, choose the one that suited the situation the best (footprint, spec, cost) , test it on the bench, get a prototype made and test in situ, then submit to production. Automotive electronics was non-existent until the end of the 80's which is when I moved into automotive (then in the mid-90's into telecomms).

So how much of your Accord also consists of off-the-shelf components.

I'll kick off with (for 7th gen)
ICE
NAVI
Aircon
Brakes

What else ?
 
I can see three black boxes with Bosch written on them under the bonnet, and I'm almost certain the rear shock absorbers are Showas.
 
As with most things in the automotive world, is imagine Honda make very little, if anything.
They will have most of their parts made by contractors to their spec, and they just ***emble them.

I find it amusing trying to spot how many cars the Momo steering wheel in the 7th Gen facelift appears in.
There must be loads of them.
 
Surely a signifiant amount it. I mean, less so than many other manufacturers as Honda like be all Honda about things, but generally speaking I'm sure a lot of things likes pumps, breaks, bushes etc must all be off the shelf parts.
 
The seats. Possibly. Although I remember the 7th Gen. ad saying Honda had spent X squillion hours designing the seats, so maybe they are in-house. Time well spent IMO.
 
Cliffordski said:
This is a list of the top 100 automotive parts suppliers

https://www.autonews.com/***ets/PDF/CA89220617.PDF

That is an awesome list.

When I bought my Accord (15 months old) it had Yokohama's, and the parking sensors were after-market. I've also thought of the HID's, and I'd bet that the alarm system is off-the-shelf, same goes for the immobiliser.

I'm also wondering if the wheel bearings are off-the-shelf (except on the Tourer), and with those in mind, so is the suspension design on the saloon (e.g. the lower arm design is upside-down and iIRC can be found like that on a couple of other marques.).

The thing that gives away if something is off-the-shelf is the availability of pattern parts, if they're available, then it's off-the-shelf common to other marques.

The only things that I'd guarantee to be in-house Honda R&D on the 7th gen, are the major electrical systems on the CANbus (MICU, Relay Module, Door Multiplex, Gauge Control) but the individual components therein are not Honda of course.

Goes without saying that the petrol engines and the gearboxes and ECM/PCM are pure Honda.
 
freddofrog said:
I'm also wondering if the wheel bearings are off-the-shelf
Not a single car maker manufactures its own bearings. Way too specialised a task.

Truth is that there is a hell of a lot of in any car that is cross compatible with stuff outside the brand and model, but you'd never learn that from the part number system Honda uses.

If you haven't heard me complain about this before: Honda ***igns different part numbers to the same parts when they are applied to different models. It really screws things up, particularly for me, as I find myself importing stuff from the UK even though the actual part is available locally. I just have no way of knowing.

It took me ages to find compatible brake discs with the correct thickness and offset. It turned out that Honda did use discs already used on other models on the Tourer. Luckily I found a website from an aftermarket brake supplier in Singapore that listed brake parts all the way down to their engineering dimensions and for some reason did include the Tourer, and an Australian supplier that did the same (except for the Tourer listing.. never imported here).

BTW the Garett or Honeywell turbo from the N22 was also used by Renault.
 
What you say about Honda part numbers is true, and that Bluetooth module was also a good ****ysis ;)

It's at the design stage that I'm really talking about i.e. a design engineer at Honda looks through data-sheets of "off-the-shelf" parts in their area of expertise, and chooses one based on the way it will fit to the rest of the car, how close it is to their calculated spec, and the cost (to the factory). Most parts that are part of a sub-system will fall into this way of doing things. So yes, wheel bearings and suspension (not sure about the rear on the Tourer) and brakes are likely examples, which is why there are many substitute pattern parts available. I'm not surprised that you could find (though with difficulty) parts more local to you in SE Asia.

The opposite to this is to design the part from scratch, get prototypes made, test in situ, then issue Tenders for it to be manufactured. The wiring loom and MICU etc would be examples of this.
 
Aww, I was under the impression that my Accord had been fettled for me by a team of men in a shed, all armed with files and soldering irons. Damn...

Seriously, Honda may well use many off-the-shelf parts and ***emblies, but they did at least write a requirement specification for every item to ensure that Honda standards were maintained, even when simply buying stuff in. A bolt is only a bolt to someone who doesn't care!
 
Jon_G said:
Aww, I was under the impression that my Accord had been fettled for me by a team of men in a shed, all armed with files and soldering irons. Damn...

Seriously, Honda may well use many off-the-shelf parts and ***emblies, but they did at least write a requirement specification for every item to ensure that Honda standards were maintained, even when simply buying stuff in. A bolt is only a bolt to someone who doesn't care!
Well that's par for the course in engineering, there's nothing unique about that surely ?
 
freddofrog said:
Well that's par for the course in engineering, there's nothing unique about that surely ?
Well no, although my point was that Honda standards would be universally applied to all components and ***emblies, including those bought in from other manufacturers. And, as we all know, Honda standards are some of the most stringent used by any car manufacturer...
 
Jon_G said:
Well no, although my point was that Honda standards would be universally applied to all components and ***emblies, including those bought in from other manufacturers. And, as we all know, Honda standards are some of the most stringent used by any car manufacturer...
my "tongue in cheek" detector has just reached max :mellow:
 
Jon_G said:
A bolt is only a bolt to someone who doesn't care!
Richard Feynman explained in his book "Surely you're joking.. " being a mechanical engineer just involved picking parts from the middle of the suitable parts list:

Near the end of the summer I was given my first real design job: a machine that would make a continuous curve out of a set of points— one point coming in every fifteen seconds— from a new invention developed in England for tracking airplanes, called "radar." It was the first time I had ever done any mechanical designing, so I was a little bit frightened.

I went over to one of the other guys and said, "You're a mechanical engineer; I don't know how to do any mechanical engineering, and I just got this job.

"There's nothin' to it," he said. "Look, I'll show you. There's two rules you need to know to design these machines. First, the friction in every bearing is so-and-so much, and in every gear junction, so-and-so much. From that, you can figure out how much force you need to drive the thing. Second, when you have a gear ratio, say 2 to 1, and you are wondering whether you should make it 10 to 5 or 24 to 12 or 48 to 24, here's how to decide: You look in the Boston Gear Catalogue, and select those gears that are in the middle of the list. The ones at the high end have so many teeth they're hard to make. If they could make gears with even finer teeth, they'd have made the list go even higher. The gears at the low end of the list have so few teeth they break easy. So the best design uses gears from the middle of the list."

I had a lot of fun designing that machine. By simply selecting the gears from the middle of the list and adding up the little torques with the two numbers he gave me, I could be a mechanical engineer!
 
I think the 'off the shelf' term is very vague, it suggests Honda have just gone through a catalogue and picked a few ready made parts and ***embled them onto a car which is not the case. They tend to have a close one to one relationship with vendor, yes a lot of periphery parts are manufactured by 3rd party vendors, but it doesn't necessarily mean its off the shelf, Honda send the vendors the spec and design they want and it gets manufactured by the 3rd party vendors, some of the parts may be same as with others, e.g. lets say the headlight is outsourced to Lucas, they send spec and design they want, and Lucas might use the same bulb holder as they make for other cars, but rest of the unit is custom spec.

Likewise some parts are completely custom, like the Suspension, made by Showa (which Honda has a unique special relationship with), but the spec and design is by Honda engineers, you can't just buy a universal off the shelf part and stick onto a car, doesnt work like that.
 
exec said:
I think the 'off the shelf' term is very vague, it suggests Honda have just gone through a catalogue and picked a few ready made parts and ***embled them onto a car which is not the case. They tend to have a close one to one relationship with vendor, yes a lot of periphery parts are manufactured by 3rd party vendors, but it doesn't necessarily mean its off the shelf, Honda send the vendors the spec and design they want and it gets manufactured by the 3rd party vendors, some of the parts may be same as with others, e.g. lets say the headlight is outsourced to Lucas, they send spec and design they want, and Lucas might use the same bulb holder as they make for other cars, but rest of the unit is custom spec.

Likewise some parts are completely custom, like the Suspension, made by Showa (which Honda has a unique special relationship with), but the spec and design is by Honda engineers, you can't just buy a universal off the shelf part and stick onto a car, doesnt work like that.
i don't think that that is what we're saying, that quote in #25 puts it quite well, things are "off-the-shelf", engineers do choose from a range of available designs, they don't redesign for the sake of it. When it comes to a new engine, or a wiring loom, or something like the Gauge Control Module, then it's different. But it would not be cost effective to design from every single thing on a mass-market car from scratch, if that were the case, then it would be extremely difficult to find pattern parts, because the latter fit multiple marques, QED.
 
Using an existing part for a new purpose amplifies the profitability of that part. Requiring a change does the opposite, especially if it is not an already available part. A general part is a cost, but a custom part is an investment.

As a design engineer, you use new parts where they count. A new body design needs new head and tail light ***emblies, which are the things that contribute to new sales. But you'd want to use the same bulb system across a range of cars, unless your tech has changed, in which case you'd want to incorporate that across your range of cars.

Everything that requires the manufacture of a new mold or dye and subsequent new manufacturing processes needs to be treated as an investment and ***essed on the necessity of contributing to what makes and sells a new car.
 
The Bosch EDC16 ECU used in my 2.2 i-CTDi diesel was an off-the-shelf hardware item (used in many diesel cars of that generation). The previous generation 1.7 i-CTDi 'Honda' diesel engine was made by Izusu and had been previously used in other makes of vehicle.
 
True they don't redesign just for sake of it, but there is still element of redesign because it still needs to fit in line with the product, some parts can be universal, e.g. a radiator fan and other smaller periphery parts. ABS unit is actually interesting as most tend to be off the shelf, but back in the days Honda designed and made their own just because they could whilst everyone used an off the shelf unit.

Also I don't recall pattern parts being necessarily universal. In the motoring industry you hav eyour genuine part, oem part and then pattern part. Pattern part is just a copy of the original part by a 3rd party vendor.
 
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