DIY Injector kill switch install. (Honda insight).
 

Ok guys just brace yourselves, because I'm ludicrously bad at writing these. I didn't take a ton of pictures but yea. It should give you the jist and help you along.

[Edit]: Cowmeat, now you have no excuses :).

Ok so, first off, tools and dodads needed (from memory).

10mm socket wrench.
Wire cutters/strippers.
Crimping tool.
Female spade connectors.
Pliers.
5-Pin relay (I don't think a 4-pin would work? idk).
Momentary Normally open switch, or some form of toggle switch.
Wire (duh?)
Common sense.
Follow basic instructions?

So lets begin.

First, lets do the wiring from the cabin into the engine bay. This can be very easy, or very difficult, it's just how you personally want to do it. I personally just ran it up the door, I am way to lazy to drill/find another way into the cabin.

Remove the 2 10mm bolts on the drivers side fender under the hood, and the one that's parallel to the mirror. As below.

https://imageshack.com/i/iqC0NZjcj

Pull the fender slightly back, no need to be brutal here, and wire it like so (in this picture I had already put the 10mm bolt back on, as you can see it).

https://imageshack.com/i/f07U9Xutj

Now that you have the wiring into the cabin, lets deal with getting the injector wires exposed.

Remove the engine cover, using the 10mm rachet (again). You will see a plastic cover over the wires, as pictured below, just use a screw driver and brute force to pull it apart. I personally unhooked the metal tubing right above it and moved it out of the way, it made life WAY EASIER working in that area. Careful as coolant comes out of one of the tubes (the one I have zip tied up). In the picture below I had already removed the electrical tape around the wires, I figured just showing you covered wires would be a waste of mine/your time. I also moved the PCV valve tube and this other tiny one out of the way.

https://imageshack.com/i/p4X4HtfEj

Next, cut the yellow/black wires, but give yourself enough room to work, DO NOT DAMAGE THE OTHER COLORED WIRES, I believe those are what send the pulses to the injectors. Like below. I had already wire-nutted one end so you can see what it should look like.

https://imageshack.com/i/iqglvqMnj

Continued on next page.

Both of the wires wire-nutted off and routed to the relay.

https://imageshack.com/i/hlMq2txsj

Now you must decide where you want your relay, I opted for next to the battery, I just find that the best spot. If you blow out a rad hose or squirt oil everywhere, chances are you won't get anything on it, and it doesn't get in the way of basic maintenance, (oil change, spark pugs, etc etc). This pic has everything hooked up, so yea. Just showing where I put mine.

https://imageshack.com/i/iqtzl6MPj

Now, once you have your relay mounted and both of your injector cuts all sorted out, you must get them plugged in!

The HOT side of the injector plug goes into port #30 on the relay. You must create a jumper from the hot side to pin #85, this is how I did mine.

https://imageshack.com/i/ipy9H6Czj

Next, you want to hook up the COLD side of the injectors to the #87A.

After that, you want to wire one end of your wires going to your switch into pin #86.

Ground the other wire coming from your switch, I used the bolt on the battery box, like so.

https://imageshack.com/i/kqji0Slrj

Now go into the cabin and clean it up! Like so! All done, it almost (almost haha not really) looks like stock!

https://imageshack.com/i/f0jkC92Sj

But this, not so much stock.

https://imageshack.com/i/ip2jSkcej

And that's it! I know I'm horrible at this, but nobody else gave the effort to make this, and I know at least one person will appreciate this. So it's worth my time! If you guys have any questions or comments, please let me know.

Here, have 2 more since I can of the engine bay after the install, it looks pretty clean to me. Was worth the 2 hours or so it took to install!

http://imageshack.com/a/img537/7937/1Uwz0q.jpg

http://imageshack.com/a/img911/6416/4EQeqN.jpg

I would like to add, I drove around grabbing coroplast election signs (shh...) and I think it was about 10-15 miles around town and it works like a charm, engine dies really fast, and it actually dies with no lugging or other weird symptoms like the coil kill method was causing.

Thanks for posting this, Balto. Too bad the simpler spark-kill method didn't work on your Insight like it did on mine.

Balto, I only see two images at the end of your build thread. Am I missing something? :)

I don't mind, enjoy doing projects like this, so I'm glad I had the opportunity to do something special to my car :P.

Yea they must not be loading for you, there are 10 pics total.

relay attachment
 

The links show up when quoting the messages, but not the images.

Baltothewolf,
That's a great idea how you routed the wires through the door.
What is this that you attached the relay to?
https://imagizer.imageshack.us/v2/77...674/tzl6MP.jpg

I have four days off on Christmas weekend, I'm going to install a kill switch then. Couldn't find time while I was on vacation since I had all that other crap to do.

Balto, it looks like you wired all three of the yellow injector wires together. How does that work? Are the remaining wires you didn't cut the ones that send the signal to fire the injectors? I really don't know anything about the wiring, so I'll probably be calling you!

Duh, now that I read it again I see you already answered me above!

It's the battery tray, my little brother grabbed a drill and drilled a hole, then stuck a screw in it. Works great!

I'll just reiterate. The yellow wires, from the time the key is on the accessories position is hot. The other colored wires are what receive and send out the injector pulses. I also believe that somewhere down the line, it's where the FCD gets its mpg reading from.

Balto, with me being a complete noob as far as anything electrical goes, I have a question.

What is the relay for? Couldn't I just cut the yellow wires, and wire each end up to my on/off switch? What does the relay actually do?

I bought an on/off pop-up button switch and a roll of 18 gauge wire. They didn't have a five pin relay at Radio Shack, they only had a four pin, and like some eight and ten pins, so I didn't get one yet. I just want to make sure I need the relay before I order one on Amazon.

Also, is the 18 gauge wire sufficient?

Okay Balto, mine's in! I followed your instructions exactly, other than I went in through the front firewall (with a small rubber grommet) ilo around the door frame..

Everything seems to be working correctly, other than it looks like I can't just throw it in neutral and EOC, I have to keep my foot on the clutch the whole time, or it wants to re-start. Of course, it can't re-start so it does a series of start-stop-start-stop, unless my foot is on the clutch.

Anybody else's doing that? I'm sure it's the FAS system trying to re-start it. One thing I didn't try was hitting my regen button, wish I would have tried that. It might fool the system into thinking I have my foot on the brake.

Thanks for the good write-up Balto. I didn't even need to call you, I just followed your instructions, so I know they were pretty well-written!

This is where the clutch switch shines! Just leave it on and bam you don't have to push the clutch. Just be sure to have it in neutral before you push the kill button.

Thanks!

I'll try that the next time I go out in it. I'm grid charging it at the moment, probably until about noon tomorrow. After that I'll check it out, that'll be sweet if it works.

On the bright side, as I was testing it out on short stop-and-starts, without the engine even being warmed up, my instant mpg want from 70.2 to 70.5, and I'm 300 miles into this tank. So I'm thinking I will see a large mpg gain using it, just like the jump I saw in Black Widow when I began to EOC in it.

***edit 1-4-15***

Yeah, that worked! Forgot to reply until just now.

As soon as I turn off the clutch switch, the injector kill button kills the injectors perfectly with no re-starts. When I turn the clutch switch back on, I use the brake regen button to keep the IMA topped off. I've done a bunch of very short trips with a lot of stop-and-go on this tank, and carpooled almost every work day with my wife, and I'm still hovering right at 70 mpg. I'm right at the end of the tank with about 615 miles and two bars left on the gas gauge. As long as it doesn't get super cold over the next couple of weeks I think I should be able to go way over 70 mpg on the next tank.
This next tank will be a full-on EOC tank with my normal commute, so it should be a good gauge of how much the kill switch affects the overall mpg.
I've also started to use my battery tender nightly to keep the 12V battery topped off since I'm doing so much EOCing now. Normally I leave for work when it's dark and return home when it's dark, so I use a lot of 12V juice.

Let me get this straight:

Injector HOT (yellow wires, on the side running away from the injectors from the relay) should be tied together and connected to #30 and #85 on the relay.

Injector COLD (yellow wires, going TO injectors from relay) should be tied together and connected to #87a on the relay.

Kill switch should be connected to #86 (blue) and grounded to the chassis.

#87 on the relay should be grounded to the chassis.

~~

You ran two wires into the cabin. Am I right in thinking that's unnecessary? That is, it's fine to ground the switch near the steering column?

If I understand this correctly, is it safe to be grounding the constant-on power for the injectors? It's not a short? Would it have been better, though much more complicated, to relay the grounds to the injectors?

EDIT: Also, cowmeat provided me a fuse. If I were to guess, it probably goes between #87 and the chassis. Is this right?

EDIT2: Seems to me the short-circuit problem could be solved by swapping #87a and #30, because when the relay is activated, the connection is broken but the injector HOT isn't grounded.

You could ground it in the cabin, but I choose not to due to safety concerns. I didn't want any potential freak accidents setting off the air bag. As for the other questions, I would have to walk out there and look to see how I wired everything.

Nice! Yea you have to hold the clutch, or it will continously keep trying to restart. However, if you push the brake it won't restart either. At least it doesn't on mine.

Makes sense. I'll try wiring it my way at the relay but I'll run the ground under the hood too.

EDIT: I wonder if it's even necessary to ground the relay.

Well, one part has to be ground so it will activate the relay. That's why you have the hot injector that's going into the relay, upon activating the relay, into a dead, spot, so no power goes through it.

I was thinking of setting it up like this:

http://i.imgur.com/lxDQxiZ.png


The blue need not be grounded, AFAIK, so long as activating the switch breaks power to the injectors.

Edit: I appreciate you figuring this out. It's an elegant solution.

You need to already have a clutch switch or the injector kill won't work (well). IMA has to be disabled with the clutch switch or it'll keep trying to re-start.

When the clutch switch is off it won't try to re-start unless you shift into gear, making it a perfect P&G platform. Of course, when you need to charge up the IMA you have to turn the clutch switch back on. That's where I use my brake regen button, to force more juice back into the IMA battery since I rarely have the clutch switch on now. I also use my battery tender almost nightly now..

Do me a favor the next time you go out for a drive, try the following.

Push clutch in at 35mph.
Kill engine via injector kill.
Push your brake regen switch and hold it.
Release foot from clutch.

I am curious if the car will restart. If it doesn't, it would provide a much easier way then flipping a clutch switch every time you want assist/regen again.

Thats exactly how mine is set up. The ground is for the relay, not the injectors. However, it's still hot when you have the button pushed hence me having reservations about grounding it near the airbag.

Not if Daox comes through with my 3-button shift knob!

Got mine set up!

http://i.imgur.com/7qM1ssS.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/62OKKqG.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/R9AsdAX.jpg


I had previously cut a hole for the button but it interfered with the turn signal, so I had to cut another slightly lower. I need to get a big washer to cover the hole, but perforated board was all I had.

I attached the relay to a bolt-hole that was already in the rail, using one of the stock coated bolts used all over the car. I sandwiched the grounds between the relay and the rail, and ran the wire to my switch through the same grommet as the +12v for my amp.

Nice! It does work, right?

Also remember guys, the DC-DC converter does NOT run when you kill the engine this way, so if your going to be P&G a lot, keep an eye on your 12v levels if your running radio/headlights/other power drawing applications at night.

Yep, works great. Thanks for coming up with this!

I'm going to need to find a balance with EoC and regenerative braking, or just not use assist as much when accelerating, because the hybrid battery was a bit lower when I got home than when I left. On the positive side, I was above 105mpg for a bit on my way home from clothes shopping earlier, but the last hill before my house brought me down to 82, which admittedly is still a record for driving in this town in traffic.

Only use assist when accelerating in first gear. I find I lose most battery power when using it in 2nd.

Ecky, is that a momentary or a pop-up?

I'm switching mine to a momentary when I get the new shift knob since I don't really need the pop-up I have now. It's convenient in the fact that I just hit it and I don't have to hold it while the injectors die, but every once in a while I forget to pop it back up and I look like an idiot at the light when my car immediately stalls :eek:

I averaged over 80 mpg on the way home last night on the first day of this tank, so that's a positive sign!

Where did you go in through the firewall, btw? I just cut a small hole between the clutch and gas pedal on mine.

Momentary. I went through the firewall on the passenger side, just below the glove box. Used a screwdriver to poke a hole in the grommet, and then used it to push the wire through.

I believe the cold side is the yellow and black. With the relay, you're cutting the ground to the injectors, not the power.

Oh, yeah, thanks. I deleted the post because I was reading it on mobile and skipped right over that without noticing it.

I got it all wired up last night. Well, there's still a wire running across the floor from the shift knob to the door, right now, but I tested it out last night and it worked perfectly. Excellent write-up, Balto. I've been holding off on this mod for like a year because I thought it was going to be really complicated, but it was pretty painless, and the benefits are gonna be huge when I'm in stop-and-go traffic and always wasting speed trying to force the car to auto stop.

Just drove my first full tank with the killswitch, and was able to get over 80mpg. Just barely over, but I definitely wouldn't have been able to do it without this mod.

Just remember that you're using the 12V after you hit the kill switch, so if you have the lights on and radio, etc . . . now you're pulling power out of that little lawn mower battery up front. And if I remember correctly you're losing the power steering (I could be wrong on that one, it's been a while)

And make sure you aren't pumping the brakes after killing it, you only get a pump or two before the brake pedal goes hard. One long slow braking action works best

Nice one on the 80 mpg tank, that's something I never pulled off in either of my Insights! :thumbup:

Thanks, I was pretty psyched to actually reach it.

Yeah, I remembered seeing that on here when I originally looked into it. I usually pause the radio if it's a long coast, but there's only like one long coast I can do on the way home, and none on the way to work. I didn't lose power steering like I did when I used to shut it off with this; it seems to stay on for a while, at least. I'm typically just coasting up to a light or down a hill, so I'm not usually hitting the brakes more than once, anyway.

With headlights, radio, and pressing the brake it would take about 45 minutes, if not longer, to kill the 12v battery. Just to let you know.