Quote:
Originally Posted by Ecky
Really that simple. Neither car has alternator or power steering pump. The only belt accessory is air conditioning.
In the case of 12v charging, you're replacing a very-good-for-a-15 year-old design with a better, new design with wider input voltage tolerances. It will keep the 12v system charged and happy as well or better than an alternator with higher efficiency.
Power steering is also electric on both cars, and both very efficient and reliable. Owners have seen zero improvement in economy from disabling this system. However, while the Insight's EPS is light and playful, I found the HCH1's to be quite heavy. Higher tire pressure would probably help, but if there's one gripe I have with the HCH1, it's the weight of the steering. It's honestly a great car overall.
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Electrical noob question...why set the PSU to 14 volts when the battery is designed to run at 12 volts?
Steering feel really doesn't mean that much to me...as long as I can still take turns at 20 MPH like I can in my current Civic (yah know, conserving momentum and not downshifting below 3rd gear
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I'd probably remove AC on the "new" car anyway. There's an '03 manual with 180K miles a good battery for sale for $1500 bc the AC compressor is seized, but if I remove it, it wouldn't matter anyway. I could probably sell the battery for $500 if it's any good. And heck, I've driven with the AC disconnected (but not removed) and no AC blower fan for the past month or so now and been fine.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ecky
I can't speak for the HCH, I've only ever driven one with a good battery, but 50-60mpg was laughably easy with zero modification. I have no idea if it will keep lean burn without the hybrid system, but I'm inclined to think it will.
Some other items worth mentioning:
The Insight has a ready-made solution for turning off the CEL with the hybrid system removed, which costs less than $15 to assemble. This could probably be done for the HCH as well, but there isn't the same community support so you'd be mostly on your own in figuring it out - if that's important to you at all.
Also, the G1 Insight has a flaw in the transmission which causes most of them to develop a gear grind when downshifting into 2nd from a higher gear. This developed in mine around 200,000 miles. A shifting technique called double clutching lets you shift into this gear anyway without grinding and isn't hard to learn, but again, worth noting. It's possible to permanently fix this (for free) by opening up the transmission. There are good how-to guides both on here and on InsightCentral, but I don't have easy access to drop my transmission so I just double clutch around it. Aside from that and the batteries, both cars are silly reliable. One member on IC has something like 400,000 miles on his Insight engine... with a turbocharger.
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That sounds delightful. I hope I can keep decent MPGs without a battery.
Where can I find info on that CEL-fix system? Do you use it in your Insight? I'm inclined to think this is how you keep lean burn without a battery since I keep reading that lean burn won't engage if you have a CEL.
Double clutching - is that shifting into neutral and then shifting into your lower gear instead of doing it as one fluid motion? Pardon my current ignorance about manual transmissions..
If you EOC to stops this shouldn't be an issue though right?