Hey guys,
I just purchased a beautiful 2001 Insight. The current odometer reading is 148,400, so I want to diagnose any problems soon!

I drove the car 500 miles home, all freeway, with a couple mountain crossings. The average MPG for the trip was around 58-59. My friend has a 2000 that I've driven quite a bit, and I've noticed that my car has a hard time keeping the battery pack over half full and takes more effort to maintain highway speeds, but it stays charged pretty easily if I'm careful with the throttle, as long as I'm not climbing anything steep. It just seems to drain it out easily, and requires a lot of assist/throttle to keep the speeds over 60 miles per hour.

The easy things I can think of that might cause these problems are batteries or the tires. The tires are 195/55/14 Dunlop Sport 8000s, which I know are quite a bit chunkier than the stock ones (and they are not low rolling resistance as far as I know). Also they were only inflated to 24-28 PSI, so I pumped them up to 44 PSI this morning. This could definitely explain the MPG - but I'm wondering if it would be related to the charging problems and inability to maintain highway speeds without excessive throttle. Before I consider taking the car into a dealership to have them check out the batteries, I thought I should know if this could be my problem. I'd just buy some Potenzas if I knew it'd help, but these tires are very new (<5000 miles) so I don't want to replace them without asking around first.

Thanks!

 

Why don't we just wait and see what the tire pressure increase does?

You mention 148,400 miles which is close to 150k miles. Are you in a "green state" like California? Is the car a green state car?

 

Sounds good, I'll report back tomorrow.

Yeah, I'm in California. If by "green state car" you mean it has the carpool / clean air stickers, yeah, it does. It has the ULEV sticker on the side but I assume that's federal/standard. The car was originally sold in California, too.

 

you might try asking your friend to swap tires/wheels for a day or so to see the difference that makes. IMHO, those tires are not suited to that car. way too draggy.

 

I'll definitely do that if the same problem persists.

I have another question for any Insight gurus: If you disconnect the 12v battery (say, to install a stereo), what happens with the battery meter when you plug it back in? Mine started at 1 bar (even though it was nearly full when I began), then quickly it "figured it out" and went back to full.

However, I have yet to see it drop below 2-3 bars from full since. I went full throttle to 80 MPH three times with the stereo on and the AC cranked on max, and the battery still reads nearly full. Before it would've been down to almost nothing after 1 or 2 of those. I've put about 75 miles on it since I reset, and the battery meter has yet to drop more than a few pegs, so I'm worried.. is there a calibration trick, or will it just take a few more miles to figure it out?

 

The good news is... the odometer over-reports by a couple percent.

Thus, to avoid litigation, Honda extended the battery warranty to 157,500 miles.
( USA only )
So you have a little longer to try it out.

I have owned a used 2000 for 3 months.
The battery meter is an estimate only. It is not absolute, nor is it an exact science.
The computer will "recal" or recalibrate once in a while.

During daily use, the power bars should move very little.
Every so often they will go down really fast, and then they will slowly come back up. This is a recal process. On my 8 year old car with original battery and 80,000 miles, I get about 1 recal per tank.

I think the non OEM tires are what is causing your car to have a sluggish feel on the highway and on hills. This car with a 996 cc engine has zero power to "spare" pushing around larger or softer tires. Heck, I have to drive in 4th gear on the highway if I have a head-wind. Look out! when you have a tail-wind though... 80 MPG highway is very likely, but it works both ways of course.
-John