[doctorgonzo]

Scored a new battery from Hybrid ReVolt, installed it last saturday, no hiccoughs, no hassles whatsoever. It is pretty cool, I’d never driven any Insight before mine and certainly never one with a working IMA. The way the electric motor starts the car and the “Auto Stop” feature were very cool to experience for the first time. But all is not rosy.

My impression is that my ICE is still “sick”. 0-60, even with a full battery is about 21 seconds. My fuel economy is about the same, about 44 mpg. We re-checked the EGR manifold, or plate and cleaned it again. The bad -345 computer was swapped for a -355, and the false “catalytic converter below threshold” (or whatever it’s called) disappeared, which is not what I expected, I assumed my cats needed replacing, in spite of the false bad cat code that the condemned 37820-PHM-345 ECM is notorious for producing, but so far, no cat codes with the new ECM. The ICE still struggles to make power and to drive “normally”, or to keep up with urban traffic, I have to dip into the assist inordinately and therefore it is a struggle to keep my battery from getting depleted quickly under such conditions.

The ECM no longer produces any codes to speak of, but the bucking problem was persistent with the EGR plugged in, and I could have swore that it even bucked once or twice—momentarily, with the EGR disconnected.

So yesterday, I pulled the spark plugs, double and triple checked the gaps and torqued them to 20 pound-feet then checked their orientation in the cylinder or combustion chamber. My head is stamped with three “B”s, and I’m running the 14-buck “B” OEM plugs. If using a clock as a reference, I’ve got two with the ground wire electrode pointing at about nine o’clock and one at about eight-thirty, or for clarification, the open part of the electrodes are at two-thirty and three o’clock. I thought the open part of the electrodes were supposed to point at one or the intake valves, or six o'clock? I squeezed some silicone dielectric grease into the coil boots and swapped all of the coils around randomly before I slipped them back on and put it all back together and then plugged in the EGR valve and took it for a test drive.


The bucking is still present but not persistent. I can actually get it to burn lean without bucking, (yay!) but only with difficulty and only on a level road at no faster than about 44 mph. It still wants to buck more than it doesn’t.

I think I might be on to something. The precise feel of the car and of the bucking changed with the coil swapping, and I sense that I might have a bad coil in spite of there being no misfire check engine code present (should there be?) So I ordered three new OEM Hitachi coils from Rockauto and will score some spark plug shims to experiment with the indexing of the spark plugs and hope that this will help my car’s power, economy and drivability, which all are terrible at present.

My ICE seems to run smoothly, in spite of it’s apparent weakness and tendency to buck, but it does have 240k miles on it. Perhaps a compression check is in order? Any input would be appreciated.