Honda Insight w/Acura TSX engine - Ecomodding

[Ecky]

Originally Posted by 19bonestock88

How does the engine pull from so low? No bucking or shaking? Admittedly I kinda messed up my car, when I did the couple of mods to improve high RPM power it makes it a little rough from 800-1100 in 4th and 5th if you don’t roll onto it gently

Below maybe 1250rpm it's a bit rough at >75% load, but no bucking, and at lighter loads it seems fine right down to idle. As I understand it you should be able to run at high load at any RPM so long as ignition timing is correct.

And now for some hard numbers, which I'm sure people will be glad to see. Outside temperature was ~35F, sunny. Roads were mostly dry, some damp spots from melting snow. A light breeze, mostly a crosswind. Car was fully warmed up. It was difficult to tell if I was on entirely level ground at times, but these numbers might be accurate to within 2-3mpg at worst.

40mph - 55mpg
50mph - 52mpg
65mph - 47.5mpg
75mph - 43.5mpg




I expect it will respond extremely well to pulse and glide.

[Ecky]

This apparently is how large an opening I need to keep the K24 cool around freezing with the radiator from the stock 1.0L engine.

[Ecky]

A few weeks back a friend backed into my car, smashing one of my headlights and slightly bending up some of the metal support structure on the driver side. Got it all fixed up, and with the new headlights I decided to switch from HID projectors to LED in reflectors for its simplicity and lower power consumption, plus maybe a marginal weight savings.

I'm pleasantly surprised by how clean the cutoff is, and the adjustment screws in the headlight housings work now so I was able to get a better adjustment and also better align the body panels, as I wasn't having to tilt the entire housing for the final fine tuning. They're not as bright as HIDs but definitely brighter than halogens. I can verify they're a reasonable choice for Insight owners which won't blind other drivers.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B074Y...b_b_asin_title

Edit: How to rotate attached images? They were correctly oriented on my phone.

[19bonestock88]

Sadly they don’t make that bulb in a 9007 though. I’m also in favor of LED over HID for simplicity and less power use

[MetroMPG]

Originally Posted by Ecky

Edit: How to rotate attached images? They were correctly oriented on my phone.

There's a whole bunch of threads on vBulletin's forum about this - the company says the problem is with wrong image descriptors in the image as saved by certain phones, and that the forum is orienting them "properly".


Dumb all around.

[MetroMPG]

Originally Posted by Ecky

40mph - 55mpg
50mph - 52mpg
65mph - 47.5mpg
75mph - 43.5mpg

Thread: Speed vs. MPG charts (post 'em if you got 'em)


PS: very impressive numbers! And fun to drive to boot.

[mpg_numbers_guy]

Originally Posted by Ecky

A few weeks back a friend backed into my car, smashing one of my headlights and slightly bending up some of the metal support structure on the driver side. Got it all fixed up, and with the new headlights I decided to switch from HID projectors to LED in reflectors for its simplicity and lower power consumption, plus maybe a marginal weight savings.

I'm pleasantly surprised by how clean the cutoff is, and the adjustment screws in the headlight housings work now so I was able to get a better adjustment and also better align the body panels, as I wasn't having to tilt the entire housing for the final fine tuning. They're not as bright as HIDs but definitely brighter than halogens. I can verify they're a reasonable choice for Insight owners which won't blind other drivers.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B074Y...b_b_asin_title

Edit: How to rotate attached images? They were correctly oriented on my phone.

Looks good. Have you measured the actual power consumption of the bulbs on low beam vs. high beam?

How are the low beams vs. high beams in nighttime visibility? The low beams on mine are better the original halogens (but are inferior to my mom's Prius HID low beams) but the high beams blow everything out of the water.

[Ecky]

Originally Posted by mpg_numbers_guy

Looks good. Have you measured the actual power consumption of the bulbs on low beam vs. high beam?

How are the low beams vs. high beams in nighttime visibility? The low beams on mine are better the original halogens (but are inferior to my mom's Prius HID low beams) but the high beams blow everything out of the water.

I'll throw my DC meter on one of them tonight.

Just as a point of reference, my 35w HIDs drew 6.8 amps a pair, or ~95 watts (47.5 ea), give or take, and low beams were generated by a flap that obscured half the light. They were definitely brighter both high and low beam, had a warmer color (good for fog penetration), had zero light scatter (the LEDs have a very small amount), and no hot spots. However, had one of my ballasts gone out I might have been a week without a headlight, with no chance of getting a local replacement, and I didn't have an easy way to adjust them as they were too heavy for the reflector housing screws to hold in place. I had epoxied them into a fixed position that was very close to where they needed to be, and tilted the entire housing to get them perfectly level.

I think i need to do some left/right adjustment on my current lights. It's a bit difficult to tell where the center of the beam is without a step in the beam pattern.

[redpoint5]

Your HID measurements sound exactly like what I found with mine. Supposedly they save energy, but in reality might be a tiny bit more than halogens. Might be 35W at the bulb, but the ballast isn't 100% efficient.

I don't modify the housing, so if a ballast goes, I just throw a halogen in, which I keep as a spare in the glove box.

So far I've found HIDs to work well in projector housings, and LEDs to work well in reflector housings.

My LEDs were very efficient... I'll have to dig it up again, but something like 10w each.

[Ecky]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

My LEDs were very efficient... I'll have to dig it up again, but something like 10w each.

I opted for the brightest (advertised) LEDs I could find which had passive cooling with the smallest COBs, so it would be closer to a point-source. Perhaps there are more efficient LEDs out there, but I don't have time right now to try dozens. Plus, these are interchangeable with my partner's Fit's LEDs. Do you know off-hand which you ordered?