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

[cowmeat]

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!

[mikeyjd]

Epic color. Awesome car man

[MetroMPG]

Nice! Congrats.

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

[nemo]

Line them all up and take a picture.

[Baltothewolf]

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

[HyperMileQC]

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?

Originally Posted by nemo

Line them all up and take a picture.

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

[cowmeat]

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!

[Insight for life]

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.

[cowmeat]

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

[nemo]

Originally Posted by cowmeat

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!

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