Terminology: Front / Rear Bank vice Right / Left Bank

When talking about the 3x8's engine, does anyone besides me constantly mix-up the front and rear cylinder banks? I mean, I tend to refer to the more accessible rear-facing bank as the "front" bank, and vice-versa. I suppose this bias in understandable, given that most other transverse-V engines in the world are front-mounted, and thus its the rear bank that gives you all the trouble.

Seems to me I could just avoid that problem by substituting "Right" for "Rear" and "Left" for "Front," since that is the way the motor would be oriented if it was longitudinally mounted (unless you put it in backwards, like in a Lamborghini Countach, but let's discount that idea off-hand.) Good idea? Or hopelessly confusing?

 

You're probably right, but I think that would confuse me even more. I know the shop-manual says the rear bank is 1-4 (Fig 31, in my copy) the cam-cover have the numbers 1-4 cast on both sides. I'm only about 1/8 Italian, and 3/4 German, so I have a hard time getting over that sort of deliberate ambiguity. The clock-wise enumeration they use is kind of weird, but I suppose it makes sense if you think of it as two four-bangers incidentally sharing the same crankshaft but otherwise living completely separate and mirror-image lives . . . Like a couple of roommates who never talk to each other because they work different shifts. Of course, opinions differ; hence the lack of any defining standard amongst purveyors of V-8 machinery.

 

Well, having labelled everything I disassembled to facilitate an engine out service, I went with the 1-4 / 5-8 terminology, and have subsequently ironed it into my own brain adequately. No more front/back for me!