2000 Honda Insight. Whatever.

I started driving Deucekid#1 to school in the insight this morning. 35 miles round trip so I save $3 or so in gas over using the truck.
This was the first drive in the dark, headlights work good, but it was moist/foggy and the wipers were abysmal and the washers didn't work. It was bad enough that I had to stop and wash the windshield off at a gas station. So, new wipers! I also fiddled with the washers for a while, reservoir was full, of water, and the nozzles were clogged. I soaked the nozzles in vinegar for a bit while I pumped the water out on the ground. Pump works great. Removed the nozzles and got them mostly working most of the time. I'll be using the washers daily until I get that system relisble. Also noticed that the washer hose has a very special curl in it so it doesn't get pinched. Mine isn't curling so well, so I have to hold it to keep it from getting kinked when I close the hood. And lastly, walking in from the mailbox I saw this. I do love all kinds of cars.

2 extremes right there

Down at the bottom of the engine bay you can see the nice shiny 02 sensor standoff thingy. I'm a little shy on the science, but I think by removing the sensor from directly in the stream of exhaust it doesn't read the dips that show that a cat is on it's last legs.
Anyway, it seems to work so far. I drove deucekid#1 to the dentist and then to the driver's license office to get her permit (she passed, yay!) and then back home, around 60 miles, and no CEL. Driving is pretty drama free aside from the synchro issues and those are more of an issue of remembering how and when to shift. If you do it right it's no problem.
250 miles on this tank of gas so far, I'm looking forward to filling it up and calculating mileage. It won't be great because there's some troubleshooting run time in there too, but it should be a lot better than the truck.

I had a set of those on the downstream lambda's in my 2002 a6, they worked great.

mazdeuce wrote: This unplugged thing is the EGR valve on an Insight. Very easy to get to, which is nice, non serviceable, which is absurd. There are several reports of fixing EGR related surging by soaking the whole valve in lacquer thinner for a couple of hours. I'm not usually a fan of these witchcraft type fixes, but every other fix for the valve risks destroying it, so worth a try. While that's soaking we move onto problem area #2, the EGR plate. This little guy is sandwiched between the block and the intake manifold and has enough passages to confuse the Minator. Word is they get clogged. I pulled the metal gasket and the plate off together and things looked bad.Pulling the gasket carefully away revealed the passages to cylinders #1 and #3 completely blocked and the #2 passage mostly blocked. Bit of work with a pick and some solvent and things were pretty again. Assembly is the reverse of disassembly, three bolts, four nuts, a couple hoses and one electrical connector. A quick drive around the block and we have no misses, no hesitation, and for now, no codes. Crossing my fingers that things are solved for now. Still can't quite get used to the valve train noise (though it sounds about like the Civic did) so I think I'm going to do one more check of the valve clearances tomorrow and then just drive it for a bit.

Called it!

Glad that fixed yours up. I ended up having to replace the EGR valve in mine. If you end up going that route, get one from a '99-02 Accord, works great and costs half of what the Insight specific one costs.

I also ended up having to replace the converter in mine, but that was because the previous owner cored it out..sigh. No amount of sparkplug spacers would help that on mine.

Nice to see this project get some love even with the big Merc still waiting to roar back to life.

In reply to t25torx:

If I was smart enough to remember you had said that it would have saved me time. Predictably, I am not. This has been a good low cost distraction. The fact that it works has been a huge morale boost when attacking the R63. I may not be a great mechanic, but I can fix stuff.

Yeah well that was ONLY almost a year ago Seeing the EGR plenum just brought back terrible memories.

Filled up the insight today. 45.7mpg calculated. Kinda crappy for an Insight. We'll see if it gets better with regular driving. In in comparison I also filled the truck today and the most recent tank in that is 15.1mpg. I should drive the Insight more than the truck.

Are you getting into lean burn mode any? I was getting around 45mpg in mine when I first got it, then finally after I replaced the cat and got rid of the last CEL code I was able to get lean burn and mileage went up to 60's if I kept in the 45-55mph range.

Also if you're not already, consider using the A/C Eco mode to get the car to use the auto off/on at stops.

There is quite a bit of stop and go and driving around the neighborhood sorting things out on this tank. Not a ton of steady 55mph to get the lean burn going so we'll see. Driving it to Austin this weekend for MotoGP, I don't think Texas highway speeds are going to be great for mileage, but we'll see.

Took the Insight to Austin this weekend with my daughter to watch MotoGP. I don't take any pictures of the car but I did take a picture of this Bimota because I had never seen one in person before. The drive over was interesting. The insight has a tiny engine and an electric motor that makes up for that in times of need. Driving the car is about managing energy flow. When you want to accelerate it gives, when you're braking or driving along at a speed where you have a bit of engine power left over, it takes back. They system is clever and works pretty well, but it does have drawbacks. I don't know how much energy it takes to punch an Insight sized hole through the air at 75mph, but it's not much less than the engine currently puts out in 5th at that speed. Hills are a bit of an issue, but for every up you have a down, so it mostly works. Where you run into problems is with a headwind. About halfway to Austin we drove into a cold front and 15-25mph winds. In order to travel 75mph ground speed we now had to drive through 90-100mph air speed. There simply isn't enough gas motor to do that. You can borrow from the electric motor, but not for very long. We ended up slowing to 62-63 to keep from running out of battery. Traffic was light so it wasn't a huge issue, it just took longer to get there, but I can see where this sort of thing could be a serious issue on a long cross country trip. You don't just get in and drive this car, you learn to drive it.

In reply to mazdeuce:

So time for a six speed and K20?

It looks like some lunatic wants to fly and drive this car back home, so barring shenanigans this story is getting pretty close to wrapping up. It's the first car I've sold that I didn't actively hate. Usually I can't part with a car until the sight of it makes me physically I'll. I'm still having fun with this.

mazdeuce said: "I don't know how much energy it takes to punch an Insight sized hole through the air at 75mph, but it's not much less than the engine currently puts out in 5th at that speed"

I'm assuming this is a rhetorical question... because I need about 4 measurements to give you an estimate (if there isn't one out in the googles already).

sleepyhead wrote: mazdeuce said: "I don't know how much energy it takes to punch an Insight sized hole through the air at 75mph, but it's not much less than the engine currently puts out in 5th at that speed" I'm assuming this is a rhetorical question... because I need about 4 measurements to give you an estimate (if there isn't one out in the googles already).

I'm betting it is. I'm not saying mazdeuce is a genius, but I'm pretty sure he's stayed at a holiday inn.

Not wanting to derail the thread, but I'm in for the science of it all... how much energy (as a form of hp) does it take??

Just chiming in here as an insight owner/driver. When 5th doesn't have enough beans, there is always 4th. I usually don't leave it in 5th unless I'm cruising solo at 70mph or higher. Add a hefty passenger with luggage and I don't even go to 5th.

In reply to cghstang:

I'm noticed that. The gearing on this car is so weird.

Time for Sleepyhead to break out that schooling and teach us all about air flow. He's one of the people who makes it so I don't have to think for myself. You need any measurements from me?

well, I found a cross-sectional area figure of 1.9m^2 (or 20.45ft^2) here, which also give the cross-sectional drag coefficient for the insight of 0.25 (a number I knew was available somewhere). I was going to ask for roof width, floor plan width, widest point at the handles width, and height between pan and roof... but that's not really required now.

So, aero drag is easy to to calculate, although I'll note I'm going to assume "sea level standard day conditions, using the 1976 standard atmosphere table"... which is half-right-ish, with Houston being at sea level.

Drag @ 75mph = 73.5 lbf Drag @ 100mph = 130.7 lbf

Now, that's not the whole 'drag' being felt. There's rolling friction. I did a weight estimate of 2145 lbf for the car with two occupants. I'm guessing at a Rolling Friction coefficient improvement of 30% (on a value I have tucked away, and don't have a source for anymore) getting a value of 0.02. Which with the weight gives...

Rolling Friction Drag @ 75mph = 45 lbf

So, based on the 75mph case, then horsepower required is: 30hp

I'm not finding an 'no-IMA' Insight dyno chart, but I'd guess that if you were cruising at 3000 rpm, that's probably pretty close to 30hp... based on my "back of the napkin math", which definitely has some errors in it.

I'll have to noodle a bit more on the headwind case, not real certain about converting those drags back into horsepower, but off hand it looks like 75mph Vg and 100mph Va would give an ~45hp requirement.

This guy says he reduced drag by 18% and improved mpg at 50+ mph by 10%+.

Helped with the highway speed hills and droping out of lean burn like was happening to you.

I wouldn't daily it but good on him for finding his own solution.

Insight tail extension project

In reply to sleepyhead:

Recent empirical evidence would agree with your estimates. Good to have an aerodynamicist in the house to check such things.

It does help to explain why the turbo was such a good addition to these cars... doesn't take too much more power to make it handle the highway better.

Although I don't have a good model for accounting for PE change requirements due to inclines... yet. It also makes me wonder about CR-Z's some... you know... parametrically.

In reply to sleepyhead:

I just spent way too much time researching Insight turbos.

I just spent way too much time realizing how much of a dog the CR-Z is in comparison

In reply to sleepyhead:

Yea but there's a well engineered 50 state legal supercharger available for the CR-Z.