New Owner in San Francisco w/ Questions

[dtlee]

Hello everyone, just picked up my Insight in Los Angeles on Wednesday. Flew down and drove it back in one day. Bought it from a very cool guy with an awesome take on sustainability... as I'm sure a lot of you also share. My previous cars have owned over 30 cars over the course of 13 years, most of them BMW's coming from a time during college when I was making some side cash dealing cars. I'm now in engineering grad school.

Here are my initial impressions and some questions:
-The car is very fun to drive. I don't remember feeling so challenged driving from Sunset District to Berkeley in any other car.
-No torque. It's killing me on hills! Parking on a very steep hill felt like I was lugging the car.
-Hard to keep 70mph on the freeway without getting into the assist.
-Very hard to de-train myself from years of stick-shift driving not to coast to a stop lest miss out on regen braking.

-Sometimes I am driving with relatively constant throttle and it feels like there is suddenly an electrical load on the motor. It immediately starts charging with 3 bars. Then goes away. What's that?
-How can I know when my car is getting into lean burn mode? other than purchasing a Scangauge
-Do all Insights have trouble driving in the SF area? I find that just to go from Berkeley to SF, I cannot stay in 5th gear the whole time on the freeway. Between downtown and Mission on I-80 I have to shift into 3rd gear to keep up with 60mph traffic. Is that normal?
-My tires are 185 width. Is this killing my mileage? I'm guessing so because even with the tires pumped to 40psi I'm not coasting as well as I did with my CRX.

Hoping to contribute to this community!
Donovan

[dtlee]

Also, are there any 13" options for LRR tires? I was hoping to replace the stock wheels with 13" Honda VX rims.

Also, does anyone know if there's a huge difference between VX / HX open-type rims in terms of aerodynamics? They look so much cooler than the stock wheels.

And the VX rims are light and cheap.

[Dougie]

Welcome!

The stock tires are the best available as far as anybody has found so far. If you look at how much they weigh in comparison to other sizes of the same model RE92, you can see why--they're very light weight which means flexible which means good.

The stock wheels probably don't make a huge difference in MPG, maybe only a bit because they're flat.

Re hills, think of it as a three speed car with two overdrive gears. There's no shame in driving in third gear up hill even at highway speeds, and I even use second in the mountains quite a bit. Most people think it's better to try to keep out of assist in hilly situations because it's easy to suck it all down--which means that not only do you not have any juice left when you really need it, but you're charging when going uphill.

[budomove]

I had vx rims on my 91 hatch, then the hxs which I still have with REAL tires for the insight in the winter. The hxs are 14", like the oem insight wheels, and handle much better than the 13" vx rims. like dougie said the mpg diff would not be more than 2-3%, but be sure to get the re92's. The hxs are about 10lbs heavier per set than the vxs, but you can more than make up for that with low weight lrr tires like the re92s.
The lrr re92 doesnt come in 13", so if anything go hx, they are great wheels.
frank

[atlaw4u]

Greetings and welcome to the club. The knowledge base section defines lean burn as "a mode used by the 5-speed Insight, during light-engine load conditions such as constant speed cruising. In lean burn mode, the air-fuel mixture delivered to the engine can contain as little as half as much fuel as in normal ("stoichiometric") mode." While you are driving, usually at a constant speed you will see the mpg hover at or above 100 mpg. This is usually lean burn. My car usually is in lean burn when I am in 5th gear and crusing around 35-55mph on a flat roand with little wind. I have a scan gauge and a warm-air modification and notice my car likes to enter lean burn any time the intake air temperature is at or above 121 degrees.

You will figure it out quickly.

Enjoy and keep us posted on your progress.

[benjamin]

Aw, everyone is so friendly! A nice bunch of Insighters, as you can see. I think most of your questions have been answered. Re. the tires, people have tried many alternatives and I remember one user really liking a high performance tire that wasn't the OEM Bridgestone Potenza... but I can't for the life of me remember what he had used. Here's a thread from a while back--a few alternatives are listed, including Michelin: viewtopic.php?p=60860#60860

Welcome, again, and thanks for the nice intro.

[budomove]

donovan, if you search, you will find many threads on lean burn, and how to engage and sustain it. As well as "forced charge", "recal", "egr", "synchro", and other main topics of interest. There is a wealth of information, just look and you'll see.

frank

[dtlee]

Thanks for the replies, guys!

It looks like my plugs might never have been changed since the car just turned 100K miles. Tomorrow I'm going to change the plugs, air filter, and try a radiator block.

Driving 55mph around the SF area is too disruptive. Can you guys get into lean burn at higher speeds? I suspect at 55mph I will be getting "lean burn stares" from other drivers around here.

I really think the tires on the car right now are slowing me down... they are 185/60's and I should be running 165/65's. As it turns out, I already have HX wheels for my old CRX and they're going to look great on the Insight. I was just wondering about aerodynamics because, well, I haven't been able to achieve hypermiler economies yet. I've ordered RE92's and they should be coming shortly.

[Dgate]

dtlee wrote....Tomorrow I'm going to change the plugs.....

Just be aware the plugs are individually matched to each of the three cylinders,The head is stamped with the mark for each plug.
The original Insight wheels (not Tires) are flat surfaced to reduce aero drag so any change from standard will add to the drag.
It may be almost imperceptable alone but as with every aspect of this car taken with other mods its accumulative.
The Insight attains its efficiency by numerous small details contributing to the total,change any one of them and its your loss.

DGate

[IamIan]

Originally Posted by dtlee

Driving 55mph around the SF area is too disruptive. Can you guys get into lean burn at higher speeds? I suspect at 55mph I will be getting "lean burn stares" from other drivers around here.

Getting into lean burn has to do with the load on the engine not the speed you are going.... I've actually have been in lean burn and around 100MPG at ~80MPH... but you can't guarantee that under all conditions ... the faster you go the harder and less likely lean burn and high MPG are.

That having been said... don't expect to be able to get as good as some of the hypermilers on the board in a few weeks... some of them have been refining their skills for years... and continue to do so .... most people find it difficult to change habits... driving style is often one of the hardest I think ... because you will be surrounded by bad drivers all the time... and it seems to me people have a psychological issue with other people passing them... people prefer to be part of the "Herd".

It is your car you can drive it anyway you like... You can drive the highways in 3rd gear at over 70MPH... just stay under the RPM red line.... But driving for MPG is a specific type of driving and means you sometimes have to choose to be the slow car driving the speed limit when everyone else is going 20MPH over... and sometimes it means keeping that extra distance between you and the car in front of you even if it results in other cars cutting you off.... sometimes it mean long brake times instead of short hard ones... maybe 1% of the people on the road ever thinking about MPG while driving... this directly effects how they drive.

Personally... my driving depends on my mood... sometimes I am just driving for fun... and end up getting crappy MPG like about ~50MPG... sometimes I am trying to squeeze every last inch out of a Gallon and get over 80+MPG... I think it is important to realize that the difference is my fault / my limitation and not the car... Most of the time I get around 65MPG... Enjoy your car... if you enjoy the rewards of hypermiling then do allot of searches and read up.... there are literally hundreds of hours of reading and information on this site.... It is up to you and what you enjoy ....