I've been reading these forums for years and hoping to buy a G1 for just as long.
I've been hypermiling and ecomodding since 2017 on my 2001 Civic. I routinely average 53MPG with this car.
As a hypermiler who's never satisfied with "good enough" I've always been fascinated with these little eco cars that Honda put so much engineering into.
In 2018 I attempted to buy one, though the car was rougher than I wanted. So I passed. Years went by, casually looking without much luck. Until a few months ago when I stumbled upon what you could call a "barn find".
I'm a career pilot and own a small flight school based in the bay area of California. I was on a trip one day and stopped into Los Banos, CA for fuel. I've visited this airport before. This time though I noticed a G1 insight under a tree, buried in weeds, in front of an old maintenance facility. I walked over to it, blew some dirt off the window hoping to find a 5MT. Sure enough it was. I left my card on the window with a note that I'd like to buy it.
After making contact and a couple months trying to coordinate with the seller I became the proud new owner of a Gen 1 insight for $1000. A charger was all it took and the car started right up after sitting outside untouched for 7 years. I was able to drive it onto the trailer.
Just left of the old red Mercedes is where this car sat for near a decade before I was able to save it.
So far its looking like a great builder. I can't find any evidence of accident damage and the body is very straight. I was only able to find one very small door ding. I do intend to repaint, this ding will be an easy fix.
If you've read this far I appreciate the time it took to read my story. This post was intended of course as an ice breaker. I have an extensive mechanical back ground and hope I'll be able to contribute to the community in some meaningful way!
A lot of exciting things have happened since I first started reading these forums and I'm very much looking forward to getting this car setup with @mudder LiBCM and some FoMoCo modules when it's ready. I'm looking forward to the journey!
180,000 miles. Which to me feels quite low relative to what I'm accustomed to. My civic is my newest vehicle currently sitting at 375,000. My K10 over 400,000.
My seat covers didn't seem to fit right, which I thought was strange. Further investigation shows I actually had two sets if original insight upholstery!
The original upholstery is all in good condition with the exception of the driver seat back. I'll be replacing that cover with one of my spares.
Everything is cleaning up great, only a few minor things I'll have to repair.
Pass side carpet had something really gross spilled in it, and a lot of it. No idea what it was, it looks like iodine when it got wet.
All the upholstery/carpet got deep cleaned with lots of water, degreaser and a drill brush. I then sucked most of the water out with a shop vac. Because I used so much water the carpet will have to be lifted for a few days so it can dry out top and bottom. Otherwise the sound deadening will absorb it and likely mildew.
A drill brush works wonders
Driver seat back
The only dark spots in the pic are shadows. All stains completely removed.
IMA light came on so he just parked it there and walked away. Everything else was fine. Honestly I think if he pulled the pack and balanced/grid charged it would've been completely fine. I don't think he put more than 10-20k on it while he owned it.
I haven't driven it enough to know if it has the second gear issue or anything like that. It did try to IMA start when I pulled it off the trailer. Though I can't imagine many of those Nimh cells are salvageable after all this time left stone dead.
The grapevine is no joke! I was thinking I'd do a little looking into the existing pack. Especially since it attempted an ima start after only running a few minutes. I would like to know that the IMA system is in good health and run the original system before installing LiBCM. That makes for difficult trouble shooting when you change things before verifying system function.
I didn't really want to invest in grid chargers and the likes before switching to lithium. Though I'm not sure how much risk I'd be taking just letting the car charge the pack back up. I suppose there's not too much risk of imbalance right now since all the cells are equally dead?
The grapevine is no joke! I was thinking I'd do a little looking into the existing pack. Especially since it attempted an ima start after only running a few minutes. I would like to know that the IMA system is in good health and run the original system before installing LiBCM. That makes for difficult trouble shooting when you change things before verifying system function.
I didn't really want to invest in grid chargers and the likes before switching to lithium. Though I'm not sure how much risk I'd be taking just letting the car charge the pack back up. I suppose there's not too much risk of imbalance right now since all the cells are equally dead?
Greetings from a different part of the aviation sandbox...I'm a mechanic at an airline.
I'm enjoying your progress here! My $1k Insight was parked for over 2 years out in a rural area and nature began to take over. Critters....yeah. :/
My pack was easily resuscitated on the drive from Hood River, OR to just north of Seattle. Hit lots of traffic. Car had been parked due to a bad ISB.
Would like to see another pic of your 7g civic...I like the wheel fairings and mirror delete!
Greetings from a different part of the aviation sandbox...I'm a mechanic at an airline.
I'm enjoying your progress here! My $1k Insight was parked for over 2 years out in a rural area and nature began to take over. Critters....yeah. :/
My pack was easily resuscitated on the drive from Hood River, OR to just north of Seattle. Hit lots of traffic. Car had been parked due to a bad ISB.
Would like to see another pic of your 7g civic...I like the wheel fairings and mirror delete!
The poor man's grid charger: Take the car out of the garage and rev it up to 4,000 RPM until it starts to charge, hold 4,000 RPM until it is charged and then let it idle for 40 minutes. It will do a slow background charge while it idles and that will top balance the cells, just like a grid...
The poor man's grid charger: Take the car out of the garage and rev it up to 4,000 RPM until it starts to charge, hold 4,000 RPM until it is charged and then let it idle for 40 minutes. It will do a slow background charge while it idles and that will top balance the cells, just like a grid...
Unsure if this is a common issue or not but it would be an easy one to miss. Found a broken ground/bonding strap. This is the upper ground next to the airbox. Pictures came after I had slid the wires out of the old ring lug. This was a lot less obvious when they were still inserted in the terminal.
My dad and I were able to make a new one relatively quickly. Just some scrap 6 gauge wire and a couple ring lugs. I dont suppose this is technically the correct high strand count wire, I can't imagine it matters much though. This is what we had on hand.
Unsure if this is a common issue or not but it would be an easy one to miss. Found a broken ground/bonding strap. This is the upper ground next to the airbox.
This is probably the most common G1 Insight issue by a country mile. Kudos to you for finding it before you chased the hundreds of different downstream problems that a broken ground strap cable can manifest.
Back on the insight, the cabin air filter felt was totally toast. I went to lowes and picked up some "sponge window seal" 1/4" thick 3/4" wide 10' long. It's basically just a firm foam. It worked great but a little snug. What probably would've worked better would be their "foam window seal" 1/4" thick 1/2" wide and 17' long. Two layers of that side by side would be closer to the original width and the "foam" isn't as difficult to compress as the "sponge" seal. On the contrary supposedly the sponge lasts longer. If I did it again I'd use three pieces and butt the corners for a better seal than a rounded edge. The adhesive on the foam isn't great, I thought itd be easier and stick better if I wrapped it around the corners. Both ends got a small dab of super glue. Filter was replaced with a Bosch HEPA that I got from rock auto.
Interior is going back together
I stuck a small piece of hose cut to length on the shifter to hold the boot up against the shift knob. Worked pretty well. I've been using cristal gx3 plastic restorer on all plastic and vinyl. $4/can at Walmart. Works surprisingly well. I'm always skeptical of those types of things.