2000 Insight - TLC and ecomodding build

[Ecky]

Originally Posted by IamIan

Check with Highwater on IC Link .. He was doing a pre-swap for people .. he sends you button replaced units ready to plug in to your dash .. you install those and send him back the old (needing new button) units... That way your dash being all opened up doesn't have to have any down time.

Getting the Dash out wasn't hard .. direction on link above .. going slow and careful it took me a few hours on a weekend to do the whole thing and have it all back together again.

Yeah, getting the cluster out takes about 15 minutes. I probably took close to 2 hours doing the soldering, but I was frequently getting up to do other things.

It's possible to get the front of the dash open without dropping the steering wheel, but if you're not super careful you can crack it. I only loosened the bolts on my steering wheel and dropped it about an inch, rather than let it all the way down.

[Ecky]

Looks like winter conditions are building some aerodynamic fairings for me:

[cowmeat]

Hmmm . . . . those pics remind me how much I do NOT miss THAT!

It was ridiculously cold here this morning, I think it dipped into the fifties

[Ecky]

I believe it was about 15 below zero when I woke this morning. Car projects have taken a backseat to getting our house prepared for winter - it hasn't been lived in for a decade, and is full of mouse holes and rotten wood. Some of the windows need to be reframed, and much of the weatherstripping is shot. I spent the last 2 days insert the house, laying fiberglass insulation, because the old stuff was laying in piles on the ground.

So far we're surviving, but it's taking entirely too much time and energy to stay warm, so I'm hoping to get ahead of things.

[Ecky]

Yesterday it finally got above 0° F, so I spent some time outside and cracked the hood. I found that the air intake box clips had come undone, and after replacing them, the trip to pick up my wife from work improved from 56mpg to 82mpg. Part of this can be accounted for with intake air temperatures - it wasn't drawing warm air from my duct behind the catalytic converter with the air box ajar - but how much?

Also decided to install some shields to prevent salt and sand from being thrown up onto the back of the engine. There are openings in the wheel wells, presumably because that's where air is supposed to exit the engine bay, but parts of my engine bay were basically getting sandblasted. This is probably why the brake lines rust on most northern Insights.

My solution:

[Ecky]

It's been a while since there was an update to this thread, but I've had several related since then:

http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthrea...ter-33536.html

http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthrea...ght-33582.html

Long story short, the car was wrecked, and for a brief time I was uncertain whether it would ever get back on the road again.

[Ecky]

Things are starting to come back together, though. I scored a pair of CV axles from a member on InsightCentral for $100 after shipping, bought a replacement tie rod bolt for $15 from G1parts, a replacement control arm from RockAuto for ~$100, a replacement wheel (dirty-ugly) for $58 shipped. Now I need to get an alignment and my summer tires mounted, and worry about the potentially destroyed winter tire next year.

Dirty Ugly Wheel:




I sanded and re-clearcoated it. I might at a later date sand it down again and go higher grit, but for now I doubt I'll even notice if I put it on the back:




Fabricated some aluminum brackets so I can reattach the front bumper cover to the bent radiator frame, which I'm not going to mess with for now:




Underbody panels bent back into shape and installed:




Things don't quite fit as flushly as they used to, but the car doesn't look obviously wrecked from a distance:




Pulled my trailer home from my father's garage:

[Ecky]

Took the car into a local shop for an alignment, to have the driver CV axle replaced (it was clunking when first putting it into a forward or reverse gear) and my summer tires mounted and balanced. Here's the dirty ugly rim, placed on the front by the tech who worked on the car:




On my way home from the shop, I was averaging very close to 90mpg. Coming over a hill, I hit my engine kill switch and, upon reaching the bottom, put it back into gear and tried to accelerate, only to find the engine wouldn't fire. I put my foot down and used electric assist to maintain speed for around half a mile, until I found a convenient place on the side of the highway to pull over.

On the side of the road, I turned the ignition, and observed the IMA would spin the engine for a few seconds, and then it would die. I sat for about 10 minutes, thinking, before checking to see if my kill switch was properly engaging my kill switch relay. It was, but on a hunch, I took out a pocket knife and bypassed the kill switch anyway, and the engine started right up.

So, I assume, either my relay has failed, or the wires leading to and from it from the injector grounds.




Interestingly, after bypassing my kill switch, the vibrations that have been plaguing my car since the accident have gone away.

[MetroMPG]

That's what you call good & bad news. Killed 2 birds with one kill switch!

I've had problems with a switch in the past (not on the Insight). Tim has too. (You know you're an Ecomodder when...)

[Ecky]

Read a thread over on IC discussing how adding weatherstripping and sealing up some of the seams can greatly reduce road noise.








Since fixing the car, fuel economy seems to be in-line with what it should be:




I attempted a grid charge, as it sat for close to 2 months, being run only maybe twice in that period. However, it's still below freezing most nights and battery voltage was climbing up to 180v, which is as high as my charger will go, so I was unable to do a balancing grid charge. I'll have to wait until it's a little warmer to get that done.