Welcome Insight #2! Update: Picked the car up. Update 4/11:

[HarryLui]

Nice purchase.

I bought my Volvo with 300,000 on the computer (odometer broke at 200,000)

Best car I ever bought.

 

[Demo24]

Eli, i just started a soon to be longgggg thread over on vwvortex in the car lounge if you wanted to chime in at some point... using your image as bait

LOL! I just read that and was like...waiiit a minute, that sounds like the car Eli just bought.

 

[kornphlake]

The car lean-burns just fine.

The way people drive down here certainly does have something to do with it. Christ.

Tires have a big impact, though. The ~60 mile trip from San Bernardino to Barstow to get a hotel, I was following her and she was only able to average 62MPG while I was able to average almost 75. Some of that has to do with MIMA and overall skill level, but still.

You bought the car you wanted at a good price, any more bashing related to the car is childish, bashing you on where you stop to spend the night on the other hand... You need a decent thrashing. Barstow???

 

[Eli]

You bought the car you wanted at a good price, any more bashing related to the car is childish, bashing you on where you stop to spend the night on the other hand... You need a decent thrashing. Barstow???

I dunno. We were tired, and didn't want to drive anymore. We momentarily contemplated making it as far as we could, but I'm glad we crashed instead.

It was only like $45 for the night. Gotta love Motel6.

 

[RU482]

this might break your heart
http://boston.craigslist.org/sob/ctd/2252447339.html

 

[Tristicus]

this might break your heart
http://boston.craigslist.org/sob/ctd/2252447339.html

Lulz.

 

[MikeMike]

this might break your heart
http://boston.craigslist.org/sob/ctd/2252447339.html

He already had stated that automatics don't command the premium manuals do...

 

[Eli]

this might break your heart
http://boston.craigslist.org/sob/ctd/2252447339.html

Wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole. Unless it was to do a manual swap.

If it was a manual, it would be a much better deal - but still $1000 more than we spent on this car.

I'll teach her to double clutch, and she can live with the worn synchros for many more years.

I love it. Wouldn't really trade it for anything. It's going to be a great car, and I just love it's miles. It's going to be fun to take it over 500,000.

It's the 2nd highest mileage Insight I know of. There's someone on the Insight forums that has one with 480k.

 

[Eli]

Eli, i just started a soon to be longgggg thread over on vwvortex in the car lounge if you wanted to chime in at some point... using your image as bait

Oh, FFS. I don't even know if I should bother........... LOL.

So much fail in that thread. A surprising amount of knowledge too, though.

 

[ballmode]

I say get it, you could always turn around and sell it for more if you wanted

 

[MikeMike]

Oh, FFS. I don't even know if I should bother........... LOL.

So much fail in that thread. A surprising amount of knowledge too, though.

tCL always has a shitload of knowledge baked in between a shitload of worthlessness...

 

[Uhtrinity]

Looks like you got a killer deal in the end, grats.

Btw, I'll try to get that LCD out to you this week. if interested I also have all the core parts for building one charger, just asking cost if you are interested.

 

[Eli]

Looks like you got a killer deal in the end, grats.

Btw, I'll try to get that LCD out to you this week. if interested I also have all the core parts for building one charger, just asking cost if you are interested.

Hmm.

Hell, why not!

I'm going to purchase one of Mike's grid chargers when they're available, but now that we have two Insights.. I'll need two.

I've been talking with someone that found a high voltage power supply that will put out 250mA @ 170V+. They're cheap, only 46$. I might pick one of those up and play with it a little. His is working well, he says.

I'll go ahead and take the parts off your hands, though. I want to build one myself anyway, because I would like to add some voltage and current LCDs to whatever case I build the supplies into. Make it a permanent fixture in the cargo area of the car.

I just picked up one of Peter's last BCM Gauges too. That will be fun.

 

[Eli]

Just thought I would give a little update.

It has now been about a month and over 1300 miles since we bought the car. We have had the new OEM wheels and tires for about 300 miles now. Wow! What a difference. I really encourage anyone who doesn't think that the tires/wheels make a difference to try it for yourself. It's easy to become accustomed to how your car feels. Since I knew what the car should feel like, steel wheels with no brand 175mm tires really made the car feel like it had concrete blocks for tires. It now coasts and feels like it should.

While the car was up on the lift getting the new wheels put on, I noticed that the transmission was leaking pretty badly. That prompted me to move the transmission work up to the front burner, so I found a nice used transmission with 84,000 miles on it. I picked this transmission over some specimens with lower miles for a few reasons:

1) It came from a car with a high LMPG of over 67.
2) The case has been opened before. Since it is unlikely that any synchro work would have been needed on such a gently driven car at less than 84,000 miles, it is likely that the ISB has been replaced. That corroborates well with the high LMPG, as that likely implies above average use of regen.

I will be doing the work with the help of a friend. Originally I had planned on sourcing another worn out transmission to rebuild at my leisure. I will keep the transmission I remove and rebuild it at some point.

As it turns out, the Check Engine Light was burned out. As I posted in the Problems and Troubleshooting forum, there were several codes, all of which were LAF O2 sensor related. So I'll be ordering a new O2 sensor shortly.

After driving both cars back to back several times, I have noticed that this car does have a bit less power, especially below 2800RPM before VTEC engages. Hopefully the new O2 sensor will help alleviate that. I still plan on doing a compression check at some point.

Something I'm very happy to report is that the engine has not used a single drop of oil so far in the over 1300 miles we've had it. It's still right smack dab in the middle of the full mark/circle. That leads me to believe that the rings are still good.

So all told, we are still at less than $4000 total cost of ownership, even including the new wheels and new clutch that will go with the used transmission. Still extremely pleased with the purchase, and with these things out of the way we expect to get at least another 100,000 miles out of the car without any major problems.

 

[alfa147x]

good to hear! What wheels did you get? I drive a 07 civic coupe is their anything that plugs into the OBD II conector to track gas millage?
Thanks

 

[Eli]

I got the OEM wheels, which are the best - 11lbs and the most aerodynamic.

You could get a Scangauge. It plugs into the OBD port, and along with your input, it calibrates to your car. It also tells a myriad of other useful sensor status information. I find the MPG feature rather useless, though.

Best way to track mileage is with something like this:

http://www.fuelly.com/driver/eli29/insight

 

[Silex]

Found you fellow Insight owner! Personally, I like the Civic HX (14") or VX (13") wheels which are as light as OEM.

 

[alfa147x]

I got the OEM wheels, which are the best - 11lbs and the most aerodynamic.

You could get a Scangauge. It plugs into the OBD port, and along with your input, it calibrates to your car. It also tells a myriad of other useful sensor status information. I find the MPG feature rather useless, though.

Best way to track mileage is with something like this:

http://www.fuelly.com/driver/eli29/insight

Awesome thanks! I'm surprised some racing wheels aren't lighter or cheaper

 

[Eli]

There are lighter wheels, for sure.

The problem is that they are not as aerodynamic. Still tough, it would be interesting to try. I've found some wheels that are about 4lbs lighter than stock. Dropping 16lbs of rolling weight might more than make up for the loss in aerodynamics. Dunno though. I imagine that spoked wheels pretty much act like a giant propeller. Not good.

As far as the Civic wheels, those are an option, but they are not significantly lighter than the stock wheels, so I don't think you'll make up for the loss in aerodynamics.

 

[Silex]

But they share look cool! I don't believe the propeller design of spoked wheels would affect aerodynamics much. I'm just going off the top of my head for laminar flows, but air as a liquid still has to follow the contours of a surface. Assuming driving straight, the point where it breaks is where the lip of the wheel takes a sharp right angle, but the air should still flow over the wheel and onwards across the door at speed. Honda probably designed the oem wheels half for it's lightweight and aero properties and half for looks to make it stand out from other non-hybrid offerings.

 

[alkemyst]

There are lighter wheels, for sure.

The problem is that they are not as aerodynamic. Still tough, it would be interesting to try. I've found some wheels that are about 4lbs lighter than stock. Dropping 16lbs of rolling weight might more than make up for the loss in aerodynamics. Dunno though. I imagine that spoked wheels pretty much act like a giant propeller. Not good.

As far as the Civic wheels, those are an option, but they are not significantly lighter than the stock wheels, so I don't think you'll make up for the loss in aerodynamics.

It's more than likely those wheels are not getting any of the 'wind resistance' the way the body is designed.

However, 11lbs for a 14x5.5" wheel is not really in the light weight category. It's lightweight due to it's size.

There are a lot of wheels in the 7-8lb range in that size equivalence. Not cheap though and that loss of unsprung weight would be wasted on a Insight unless you are pulling jackrabbit starts and high threshold braking.

 

[Eli]

Yeah, the 7lb 14x5.5" wheels I found were $450/ea.

The Insight is a quirky car, and it responds to things much differently than a normal car would.

The difference between OEM wheels/tires and the steel rims and 175mm tires that were on the car was profound. It drives like a whole different car with OEM equipment. Now, I don't know how much of that was the wheels and how much was the tires, but neither were helping and changing them both out made a huge difference. The car feels like it should now. It just did not want to coast before.

 

[Eli]

But they share look cool! I don't believe the propeller design of spoked wheels would affect aerodynamics much. I'm just going off the top of my head for laminar flows, but air as a liquid still has to follow the contours of a surface. Assuming driving straight, the point where it breaks is where the lip of the wheel takes a sharp right angle, but the air should still flow over the wheel and onwards across the door at speed. Honda probably designed the oem wheels half for it's lightweight and aero properties and half for looks to make it stand out from other non-hybrid offerings.

The Insight wheels were engineered specifically for aerodynamics while being light weight. Otherwise, they could have used a myriad of lighter, better looking wheels.

From all the reading I've done at Ecomodder.com, making it so your wheels do not "chop" and disrupt the air is a high priority. The laminar flow from the bumper to the door would most certainly be disrupted by a spinning spoked wheel.

 

[wirednuts]

this transition from 20mpg cars to 40mpg cars sucks for those of us who cant afford a new car right now, but at the same time if we dont sell the ones we have soon we wont get shit for them later. all at the same time, were paying twice as much for gas as we used to, or need to be now.

 

[halik]

More of a project than a daily driver at that point, but after wheelbearings and new suspension it should be alright. How old are the batteries?