2000 Insight - TLC and ecomodding build

[Ecky]

Originally Posted by cowmeat

That's a nice shiny EGR valve. Did you get one of the cheap Accord V6 ones like I have or did you go with one of the more expensive ones?

That's the original one, cleaned up.

[cowmeat]

Holy crap!

I'm going to need you to come down here soon and detail my car, man!

[Ecky]

Originally Posted by cowmeat

Holy crap!

I'm going to need you to come down here soon and detail my car, man!

The plan is to do this to every single part under the hood that needs it, bit by bit, before the snow comes. I'm looking at a very slightly rusty clutch slave cylinder as my next victim.

[pgfpro]

Originally Posted by Ecky

The plan is to do this to every single part under the hood that needs it, bit by bit, before the snow comes. I'm looking at a very slightly rusty clutch slave cylinder as my next victim.

Nice work!!! At the end it will look better then stock.

[Daox]

Very nice. Its great to see people taking care of these cars. Almost all the ones I see on craigslist are so beat up.

[Ecky]

It's almost time for snow tires. Rather than pay twice a year to have my tires remounted, I decided to go by the junkyard and see what they had. Interestingly, the local scrapyard only had two vehicles which had rims that would fit my Insight, both first-gen Prius. They're relatively heavy, at about 13lbs each, but definitely better than steel wheels. The scrapyard is asking $25 per rim, which doesn't sound too bad. On a severe budget, I don't think I can do better.

[Ecky]

The Prius rims didn't work out. Although it was close, they didn't quite go over the hubs, and I'm not interested in having them machined. The scrapyard does have a set of 3 (not 4 =() Civic HX rims that I'm considering making them an offer for, but that's realistically a project for next year. I'd want to find a lone HX rim to complete the set with before buying an incomplete set. So, I ended up getting a set of Nokian Nordman 5's mounted on my stock rims.

It's hard to estimate the impact of winter tires on my gas mileage. Right now I'm getting anywhere from 70 to 90mpg on the straightaways I was getting ~100mpg on at the same 50mph with RE92's in warm, dry weather, but the weather is not comparable. Plus, the tires are not broken in yet. The handling is certainly different, though. Taking corners quickly, there's a bit of a "rubber band" feeling that wasn't there with the Potenzas. The Nordmans are also considerably more whiney even at low speeds, but even with 47PSI (max sidewall) they have a significantly softer ride.

Today I cleaned up the rear drums and rims, which were showing a lot of corrosion where the different metals were in contact with each other.

Before:


After, with a coating of anti-sieze to hopefully minimize further corrosion:







At first I thought the rims were badly pitted, but after going at it with a razor blade for a while, it looks like there's some pitting, but mostly there was corrosion built up on it. It might just be in my head, but I'm thinking the wheels might be slightly quieter now. Maybe they're sitting more level?

[Ecky]

After taking apart the front, the only part I could definitively identify as being steel was the bit that holds the lug studs at the end of the axle, and the rotor. It looks like the brake calipers are aluminum, and there wasn't even the faintest hint of any oxidation on the brake lines, so I'll check back on them after they've had salt exposure. I'm thinking after this winter I'll probably replace or have refinished the rotors, as they have some serious grooves in them, but in the mean time I cleaned them up anyway.

I'm glad I took it all apart before the salt got to it though, as the bolts holding the calipers in place were incredibly difficult to get off. I was afraid I was going to break my socket. I retorqued them with some anti-sieze.

[Ecky]

While the weather is still good, I refinished my headlights again as I wasn't 100% happy with the job I did last time. I had been applying a Meguiar's Protectant to them, which brought them up to crystal clarity, but it washed off every time there was rain and that was unsatisfactory. This time I sanded them up to 2500 grit (up from 1200 last time), used a plastic polish (and spent more time on it for a better result), and then used a compound called Opti-lens to seal it up this time. I'm pretty happy with the results.

[cowmeat]

Dang man, that looks really good!
I'm going to do Turtle's for my son while he's away, hopefully they'll turn out as good as yours did