[countchocula]

Has anyone modified the Insight to provide a smoother ride? My only real complaint with my Insight is the ride is pretty rough, and I'd like to know if I can improve it somehow.

 

[figgy]

The trade-off always seems to be that you sacrifice mpg for smooth and quiet.

Are you running your tires pumped up? Putting them at the Honda pressures (38,35) makes is smoother and quieter, but you lose mpg.

Quiet can be worked on by sound insulation pretty easily.

Smoothness is harder without losing mpg. I would start by just experimenting with tire pressures starting with going to the 38,35 or even a small bit lower.

Other folks might comment if they switched tires completely to other brands...??

 

[Guillermo]

If you switch from your OEM 165/65R14 tires to a wider
185/60R14 tire you will be very impressed with the ride quality and comfort increase.
Yes you will use about 10% more fuel, but your car will be more comfortable and safer!

 

[cakley]

I know that alot of motorcycle shocks can be adjusted to make a smooth ride. I wonder if a shock shop could rebuild the stock honda shocks to improve them? Or if bike shocks could be adapted to the Insight?

 

[TomV]

Better tires did the trick for me

I moved to Michelin HydroEdge 185/65R14's, inflated per the door jamb pressures (to start) and the ride improved dramatically. So did the road noise and handling. Mileage went down, but after adjusting for the 4.8% decrease in indicated speed (and thus indicated mileage) I don't think it's vastly different that where I started. I'm going to guess that it's down less than 5% in real terms. Ended up with about a 1% speedometer error, reading on the low side. Original speedometer cal. did not really match the original tires.

Tom V.