Manual Insight Trade: Worth It?

[griffga]

So I've been thinking lately a lot about wanting to trade my CVT for a MT Insight. Just wondering if anyone has experience with a CVT vs. Manual in MN or near Canada in terms of gas mileage in total as in hot months and cold months combined. I know that the weather is near 40 degrees Fahrenheit or below for so many months that it may not even make that much of a difference. I've just never driven a MT Insight and I am really longing for a more fun and engaging experience. I like the CVT, but the excitement is a little low at times with no shifting. Any thoughts? Maybe someone would let me take a test drive?

[02insight]

I dont know if the trade is worth it, but when I am sitting in traffic in my MT insight, I wish I could trade it for a CVT.

If you are an extreme hypermiler and want to see really high numbers (70-80mpg) most of the time, then you might want the MT Insight. But if you are happy with getting around 55-65mpg with normal driving, I'd stick with the CVT.

[MN Driver]

There are plenty of members here who live in MN here, including me. Below about 40 degrees the car will idle instead of go into auto-stop, as far as I know that would be the same with the CVT. If you have an MT, which has lean-burn, the engine and cat need to get up to full temp before lean-burn will engage and it can be difficult to maintain lean-burn at highway speeds in the extreme cold, if not hard enough within traffic or at any given solid speed many times. In March of this year I managed to get every gas tank slightly above 60mpg but I've got enough distance(15 miles each way mostly on the highway), patience, no traffic, and I'm also willing to not use the heat until everything is at full temp to get that gas mileage when there is snow on the ground. On the same commute with a similar amount of effort and travel speeds and also not using air conditioning, I'm getting 70mpg on the same trip. I've been a little lax in my habits and am not quite getting to 70mpg on most tanks but it's possible but usually get ruined by a trip into downtown Minneapolis or swinging through the stoplights and traffic in Anoka. I haven't driven with temperatures low enough to cause the 12v starter to kick over as I've had mine since February and this year it was a fairly mild temperature month. I've got a wedding to go to, followed by a camping trip, and then a cross country road trip afterwards, if I have spare time between all of this, I'll let you know and we can meet up.

[RobertSmalls]

A kill switch will restore auto stop year round, regardless of the climate control settings, vehicle speed, and engine temp. A hot air intake, if sufficiently hot, will give you lean burn in winter once the cat gets hot enough (5mi or so).

I find the MT engaging to drive, and it rewards you with great mileage if you do it right.

[griffga]

I haven't looked into a kill switch or the hot air intake modification. Are these mods hard to do? I know that to engage auto-stop in very cold weather requires that the climate control system be set to off. I have never had the 12volt starter kick in even in the dead of winter. Maybe I am lucky?

That would be awesome to get a drive of the MT Insight though MN Driver. I am about 50 mins from Anoka so it wouldn't be that bad for me to drive out. You have a lot going on though, so just send me a message if you have some time to burn.

I was wondering though concerning the lean burn, in very cold weather do you have to drive slower in order to engage it? It seems to be a very enigmatic mode of the vehicle at times. I have heard everything from tires to speed to weather to using the A/C affecting its operation. Right now I am not running the Potenza tires because they were $85 a tire and I found some 175/65/R14 Falkens for $55 a tire. I have noticed about a 5MPG drop even in the CVT. I suppose those tires might even prevent lean burn from working? That is why I am just curious if it would make a difference at all for me. I normally drive on the interstate about 65-75 depending on the speed limit. Shifting is fun though, and my only "downshifting" right now for fun in corners is to hit the S mode and zoom out of it. lol It's kind of cool in round-abouts.

[MN Driver]

I'll show you how lean-burn works when we meet up. In my opinion, lean-burn is the single most frustrating thing about the car for me. In order to engage it you need to hold the FCD pretty close to 100MPG and you have to wait a second or two for it to engage. Then once it engages you need to slowly apply additional throttle and once you are in it you can't put more throttle than about 70-75MPG(or 65MPG when it is colder) in 5th gear. So basically to stay in this efficient mode on the highway you have very little room to accelerate and most hills will take away your speed so you need to be ready to either drive faster than the speed limit to compensate or accept that the people behind you might get mad. Every few minutes the lean burn will discontinue to purge the NOX out of the NOX catalyst for about 8 seconds, this can get frustrating because if you provide too much throttle the lean-burn can drop out and when you aren't paying attention, you really don't have a way of knowing if it was due to too much throttle or if it was a purge until 15 seconds later and you realize you are going 5-10mph faster than you want to go. The Scangauge helps with this a ton because it shows us the parameters like throttle position sensor position, engine load, and whether it is actually in lean-burn or not. If it wasn't for lean-burn I wouldn't have a scan-gauge

...this is a -really- good reason to use the OEM Potenzas and one of the biggest pushes for me to want to get rid of aerodynamic drag and try to keep the car in tip-top shape so it performs the best it can to eeck as much performance out of lean-burn as you can.

About the best solution to maintaining whatever amount of power you want while cruising on the highway without dropping out of lean-burn as much is to get MIMA so that way you can provide supplemental power climbing hills and it also lets you regen while going down the other side of the hill without dropping out of lean-burn. I'm going to get this soon and am also going to build a grid charger for the battery and once I figure out the capacity of the battery that I want and I have the time and money available, I'll be upgrading that too, I'm probably a bit more dedicated to reducing my gasoline consumption than most.

[RobertSmalls]

Yeah, LB makes driving an Insight interesting. On hills and ridges, you can drop out of LB to hold your speed, or you can allow your speed to follow the terrain and get amazing mpg results.

Hills can improve your mpg at faster speeds: you can LB down the hills, and run at 50mpg up the hills. At the same speeds on flat land, you wouldn't see any LB at all.

I really feel like LB was designed for 55mph highways. At 60mph, I've got a bit of headroom for terrain and speed adjustments. But if I'm cruising at 70mph, I have ZERO headroom, and I have to drop out of LB (oh no, 55mpg!) if traffic applies pressure.

If you don't feel like wringing every last mpg out of the Insight, you can turn the FCD off. In which configuration, the MT will still deliver better mileage than the CVT, but by a smaller margin.

[MN Driver]

RobertSmalls, I seem to have a difficult time with 55 but with the extra engine speed and same MPG it seems that I can handle hills with more ease at 65mph and after driving the same stretch repeatedly over different circumstances I sometimes find myself hugging 75mpg at 55mph amonst all the time while if I've accelerated to 65mph, then I'm getting chances to be between 80 and 90mpg with room to back off the throttle during purges so it doesn't hurt my MPG. It confuses me a little because it theoretically doesn't make sense but I've noticed that at about engine load at 70% or so and roughly 90 MPG I get only minimal speed gain at 75mpg. I find myself accelerated above a target speed just so I can try to stay below 80% load but really aim for somewhere in the 70-75% range on the highway. I'm not sure if the lean-burn ratio is different or if timing changes or maybe it's my EGR funk not being as funky at those speeds.

[Artric]

I drive the manual, and for me it's the only way to go. I wouldn't exactly call it "engaging", however. But then I'd call my S2000 and 599 engaging. However, I'd also call my Ruckus engaging, but it has a 49cc motor, and ironically a CVT.

I guess it depends on what you call engaging. I'm engaged constantly watching myself get 100MPG, if that counts!

Can't comment about the cold weather, only had mine since March, and I'm in FL. I'm a little excited and a little scared for the colder months...

[griffga]

I appreciate all of the replies. The lean burn feature does definitely sound like it would work best in Kansas. =) Although, southern MN is relatively flat and if you drive a lot of the country roads the speed limit is 55 anyway. There is no way I can approach that mileage on the CVT. The best few tanks that I ever got were 68MPG average with about 90% highway driving. I will just have to drive an MT Insight and see for myself how much I want to try out that feature. I hear a lot of Insights have trouble with lean burn as they get older though, with engine wear and clogging in various ports I suppose? I took off my EGR valve about a month ago and did the WD40 cleaning trick. It wasn't really clogged though even though I had not ever cleaned it. Maybe the CVT doesn't tend to get as bad? This is a car with 152K miles on it, too. Hey by the way Artric, I checked out that Ruckus. Pretty cool looking little scooter.