With my continued gas savings I bought this! (2001 Insight)
 

Meet Turtle's replacement! I hope to have as much fun modding Ron Burgundy as I did with Turtle. Turtle is also staying in the family, my son will be driving it going forward!

This one was well worth the two hour drive. With only 112,000 miles on it and a new IMA battery and tires, there is plenty of life left on the clock!

The original ad from the dealership I bought it from:

http://www.performanceautos25.com/Insight/

Details: Ron Burgundy - 2001 Honda Insight base Fuel Economy - EcoModder.com

Not bad mpg for the drive home!

http://ecomodder.com/forum/attachmen...9&d=1424558167

http://ecomodder.com/forum/attachmen...0&d=1424558167

http://ecomodder.com/forum/attachmen...1&d=1424558167

http://ecomodder.com/forum/attachmen...2&d=1424558167

http://ecomodder.com/forum/attachmen...3&d=1424558167

http://ecomodder.com/forum/attachmen...4&d=1424558167

http://ecomodder.com/forum/attachmen...5&d=1424558167

http://ecomodder.com/forum/attachmen...6&d=1424558167

http://ecomodder.com/forum/attachmen...7&d=1424558167

Epic color. :) Awesome car man

Nice! Congrats.

Was that a factory colour? I know the sunroof isn't OEM!

Line them all up and take a picture.

MetroMPG, that is not a stock color. They also have Tesla style doors (no door handles).

You actually bought this car! Wow, congrats. It looks nice and I dig the color too. I hope it is in great shape as the ad mentionned. I read in your garage entry that the grid on the hood is a solar pannel, now I understand!

So, what abouth the handle less doors, how do you open them? And what is the green switch finally, is it a clutch switch?

Yes, do it! This will be an epic scene.

The receipts for all of the work done to the car since it was new were in the glove box, so I spent half an hour reading through them before I even really looked at the car:

The paint is a custom color, and cost well over 4K. They took it apart to re-paint it, the only thing they didn't do is pull the engine and paint the doghouse. That's the only silver left anywhere on the car. The paint job is over five years old, but the people who owned it for the last five years garage kept it, since the paint is absolutely flawless.
The seats were over 700 bucks, they're thick cowhide with great padding and are in perfect shape.
The IMA battery was replaced by Honda under warranty right at 100,000 miles, along with new control modules. That was less than 12K miles ago! I'd say the last owners had the grid charger because they only drove it like 2K miles a year. Won't be a problem for me, lol!
The RE92's have less than 10K on them, and there's hardly any wear visible.
The sunroof is manual and is a kit-install, but it was really well done. I wasn't sure about it since I'm in Florida and it can heat up the car, but my wife is in love with it. It's dark tinted, but I think I'll get one of the roll-out shades to clip on it.
It has an upgraded Kenwood single din system with rear speakers that can pretty much blow the sunroof open.
The shaved doors in my opinion were kind of gimmicky, but that was before I hit the remote that first time. Badass mod there! They pop open a couple of inches when you hit the button, pretty cool stuff. Even my wife (who is hard to impress) thinks they're awesome.
The solar panel on the hood was my biggest WTF moment. They actually cut about a three inch diameter hole out underneath it for some reason, and then proceeded to just slap it on the hood with silicone caulk. I like the thought of the solar panel, but their execution was worse than the wheel skirts I put on the Festiva! I'll be finding a way to make that a little more presentable!
And then there's the green button . . . dunno yet on that one. There's power to it, cause when I click it on it lights up, but it's not a clutch, kill, or regen switch unless they unhooked it but left power to it. The guy said it was for some fog lights, and it looked like maybe there were some mounted on it at one point. I might re-mount some on it later, or I might make it a clutch switch. I can't stand not being able to manually control the IMA

On the way home up I-75 it held lean burn insanely well! It seems to kick down out of lean burn to clean the cats way fewer times than Turtle does, not sure why. The acceleration was smooth as silk, all the way from 150 mpg back down to 80 mpg, which you Insight guys know is the jerky area. No jerkiness whatsoever in this one!

All in all, I think I got a pretty sweet deal. The car has 100K miles less than Turtle, a newish IMA battery, nice OEM tires, brand new tune-up with OEM plugs, oil change, bunch of custom options, holds lean burn like a champ, a four hundred buck grid charger thrown in the deal, and is in overall excellent shape.

Can't wait to start modding it up!

And yeah, I'm sure we'll be lining the three of them up and getting some pics, lol!

Tim - I dropped you some money on Paypal. I need an Ecomodder decal stat, and a purple star if you guys still do that!

Congrats on the new car! Its a looker. I have been thinking about your new set up and I am not sure if you were planning on removing the solar panel or using it to power something other than the 12v, but I would leave it be. The reason I say this is because the only big down side to door poppers is the fact that they only work if the 12v is charged. (Some have a manual release hidden somewhere, yours may.). it's not fun dealing with doors that won't open because the battery is dead. Obviously you could crawl through the hatch on the insight and open a door if the battery dies. I just thought I would give you the heads up. I happy to see that you "rescued" another insight from the hands of someone who just thinks its another appliance.

Thanks, man. So far I love the car.

I already have a battery tender that I hook up nightly on Turtle, so I'm covered with the 12V. But like you said, I really don't want to have to crawl through the back to open a door, lol!

So far the only thing I found that needs attention is the sunroof (imagine that). It's 99.5 percent waterproof, and I will want it more like 100% waterproof!

Ordered the sunroof seal, antenna and a cabin air filter since I don't know when this one was changed last.

Still trying to find an OEM rear view mirror

It dry season what's the hurry? Don't those things always leak?

Cause it drips in on the passenger side, which would be the end of my wife's carpooling with me! We're trying to keep miles off the new car, but water on her head would pretty much guarantee that she would begin driving her car from that point on

Man I love the color on that thing!!!

Looks like a very clean car!!! Congratulation.:thumbup:

Cowmeat. I almost want to fly out there and steal that car. That color with the shaved handles. It's car porn bro, you should have put NSFW on the title.

Great score!

Pull out that sun roof and add another solar panel in its place. It's always going to leak. Hell if the OEM can't keep them from leaking, how is some fly by night mechanic with a saws-all going to do any better?

FWIW, My wife's 99 Avalon with 298k miles on it has a sun roof that has never leaked. But it was oem and that's probably the difference.

But, back on track: That Insight is beautiful! How did you happen to find it?

One of the guys on IC thankfully posted the eBay ad, so I found the Craigslist ad and called the guy. It was a couple of hours south of here, glad I made the drive
FYI - It looks just as good in person, and if you think you're seeing paint chips, it's reflections!
I detailed it today (I'm a former professional detailer) and it looks like it just left the showroom floor! I dropped the black interior items from Turtle into it (rear carpet, front carpet and floor mats), and it looks pretty sweet!

So far it seems like this has been my best score ever on a car.

Wow, that is a nice looking low mile insight! I'm going to have to find me one of those sooner or later.

You are purple starred. Thanks for the support! Your decal will be in the mail shortly.

I thought that was a solar panel on the hood when I saw it first. Man, they could have just put it on the dash somehow if the idea was to keep the battery topped up, what were they thinking... :mad:

For the rest a great looking car, they're very rare over here unfortunately. I wish you many happy miles with it!

My civic's moon roof doesn't leak, but it made the car very HOT.

Clipping radiant barrier foil underneath the glass has made the car much cooler inside,
and putting a solar panel there would help even more. :)

That's actually a good idea...

Yeah, that's exactly what I did on Turtle when I started using the camera for my rear view mirror.
My son might pull it out of there, but for now the sunscreen is permanently fixed to the rear glass

On Ron Burgundy I think I'll just cut sunscreen the exact size of the sunroof glass, and fix a suction cup to each corner and stick it on there every day.

http://ecomodder.com/forum/attachmen...0&d=1424729401

Yea don't do any ghetto mods to this car pls.

Lol, c'mon Balto! I probably won't ghetto it up like Black Widow, but you know better than to think I'm not gonna mod this one up!

First up is creating my injector kill and the clutch and regen switch wiring. At the same time I need to get Daox to make me another shift knob, and incorporate the same three buttons from the first one. This was the handiest of all my mods on Turtle and a must-have on the new one.

After that, I'll deal with moving the solar panel off the hood and onto the back window (or maybe onto the sunscreen since I'll put on the sunroof every day with a snap plug connection?), and at that point I'll need a small hood scoop to cover up the hole under it. I'm thinking gloss black hood scoop, non-functional to match the rest of the maroon & black on the car. Not positive about that one yet.

I haven't thought it out past that, gonna take the modding slow and calculated this time

Corvette has a glass panel in the hood to see the engine, you could do the same with Ron. Not looking at a blown V8 kinda kills the cool factor but I think a glass panel would look much better than a scoop. Maybe just leave the panel there and not functioning?? It's not that bad looking from the pics and doesn't stand out like crazy either.

I didn't say mod, NOOB. I said ghetto :P. A kill/regen/clutch switch isn't ghetto, making underbelly panels out of yellow material from a farmer is xD.

Haaaaa!

If anybody sees the yellow, it means that for some reason the car is upside down! I doubt that I'd care about anybody's remarks at that point, lol!

WOW what a ecomodder champion! amazing! :D

How's black widow ;)

Gotta update here in a few mins.

First tank is going well, a little over halfway through the tank and close to 70 mpg out of the box with no mods. If it warms up a little next week I'll go up over 70 mpg for sure.

Ordered a 3-button shifter for it from Daox, replaced the antenna with a stubby, replacing the cabin air filter today. Might run to Plant City and grab some more coroplast pallet liners to replace missing aero panels

Today I'm going to be working on three separate Insights. If both my sons bring theirs over at the same time I'll post some pics of the three of them together.

no not the mustang black widow the FESTIVA.

Photo layout idea: The three cars in a semicircle with nose in, drivers near the doors. Swimsuit model laying in the foreground. Or you could loose the drivers and the cars. :D

Lol, Black Widow's needing a clutch (probably from so many bump starts) but otherwise doing great. Of course my son will never drive it now since he bought Turtle from me, lol!

Nemo, send me a swimsuit model and I'll hook it up!

Be sure to put some breathing holes in the box!

Pretty good results so far on Ron Burgundy's first tank.

With this much left at 500 miles I should get at least 650 miles on the first tank. This is straight out of the box with no mods. Have the three-button shifter ordered, and will be adding the front aero panel in the next couple of weeks.

Also got the leaky sunroof seal replaced last weekend. Took about an hour, and it raised the waterproof percentage from 99.5 to 100% :thumbup:

http://ecomodder.com/forum/attachmen...7&d=1425404565

First tank went pretty well, ended up over 650 miles and close to 69 mpg.

This is straight out of the box driving with no mods installed, so this is all car and driver. We will see what the upcoming mods will do.

In the next week or two I'll have all the mods below on the car:

#1 - Front aero panel (pallet liner) to replace the missing panels
#2 - Clutch override switch
#3 - Brake regen switch
#4 - Injector kill switch
#5 - Three-button shifter

Never thought I'd say I dig Ron Burgandy:D. Seriously though that is a beautiful car.

Yeahhh... let me know when you decide to do the mods. I'll install your clutch switch and brake switch ( would be nice if we can get the seat out ), and I'll need some help manufacturing some aero panels for mine. I still need to do my brake switch, as well.

Remind me and I'll bring over some heat shrink for the shifter, as well.

We'll need a couple of hours to install the wiring, shift knob and aero panels on both cars. We'll have to get some more pallet liners in Plant City, and they don't fit in the Insight, lol!

Just need some time to do it, which won't happen this week since I'm finishing up a kitchen remodel and we are painting this weekend. Probably have to wait another week.

You could install a brake regen button on yours real quick, though

Yeah, I'm probably going to do that tonight.

I got my remote in yesterday, but my door actuators for the driver's side and passenger's side are both broken. The hatch locks and unlocks, but the latch is broken on it, so basically nothing works. Gonna buy a replacement actuator for my driver's side and see if it works before getting the passenger's side, as well.

Don't know whether I'm just gonna get some tap-in connectors for the brake switch, though. I might still use the cones, as it looks like the brake wires are a lot easier to reach than the clutch wires.

I still don't know where to route my brake switch to for the time being, though.