welcome to wacky Wednesday's, where everyone has a chance to show off their
car mods, and here's this week's winner,
today I'm doing a video on my 2002 Honda Insight and why I think it's the best
car to own if you have a car you actually care about, this is the first
production hybrid to the US market debuting in 2000 and running to 2006
beating out the Prius by a couple months what makes this car so unique is just
how many sacrifices Honda was willing to make for gas mileage, this is just
something that couldn't be done today in order to make it so light everything in
the car is aluminum, from the wheels to the frame and the body because of all
these sacrifices it's no wonder that Prius went out in the end
however Honda has brought back the insight in the second and third
generation both distancing themselves from the first generation that was
unapologetically hybrid, this has a three cylinder one liter engine only making
about 64 horsepower between the engine and the transmission sits the electric
motor which makes about 10 odd horsepower because of the instant torque
of the electric motor this car goes from zero to 60 in about 10 seconds with the
five-speed transmission and about 13 seconds with the CVT automatic
transmission, although this is a two-seater sometimes my friends can get
away with sitting in the back trunk and just covering themselves with the
blanket although this is super illegal and not recommended
the design of the insight resembles a lot of a raindrop, it has its roots in
the classic CRX it also borrows the gauges and the steering wheel design
from the s2000 of the same time period, because of its strange design it does
draw a lot of attention the only bona fide modification I have
to my car is to increase gas mileage of course so as you can see here I have a
dryer vent and I only have this on during the cold months of the year
usually in the winter and so what I do is I route the air from the front you
can see this snorkel here that brings in cold air from the front and I just
reroute that around this engine piece which I take off to make this all fit
and back to my catalytic converter back here and my exhaust and what that does
is it lets the engine bring in warm air to the combustion chamber and I'm not a
hundred percent sure if it increases its fuel economy through leaner combustion
but it certainly tricks the engine to think that it's warmer outside allowing
it to idle lower and give me auto stop function while I'm in the city and in
traffic and so that's really important for gas mileage in the wintertime so
this is something you can actually do yourself on any car you want really I'm
not sure how much exactly it improves gas mileage but I know that people have
done it far better than I have, this is just the easiest way that I've seen
people also drill holes in the air box the air filter box right here just to
draw in hot air from the engine compartment but it kind of helps to take
the air off of the hot exhaust to really get the effect so yeah that's how I stay
warm in the winter, I bought this car for only $1000 from a guy here in town he
was originally from the UK and actually was in the crowd of one of the Top Gear
episodes, he forfeited the car because the battery had died
after the car had sit for too long, I was able to revive the battery however
through a cheap kit that I bought online that helped top off each cell to make
the battery healthier and last longer since then I haven't had to rebalance
the battery cells, what's most important to me about this car is the fact that
I've been hit three times in the last two weeks I was rear-ended which actually
paid the car completely off I got $900 from the insurance company just for that
little bump right there, my mirror was almost knocked off while I
was parked on the street and my dad actually backed into me when I was in
the driveway so you can say that the insight saved to my Volkswagen Beetle
three times from being hit and that alone pays off a car like this, it's
cheap to buy cheap to maintain and it'll save you from the car that you do love
from being hit, so that's my video thank you guys for watching and thank you
Scotty for featuring me on your channel, well that was this week's video and to
have your car mod shown on my channel here check this out,
so if you never want to miss another one of my new car repair videos, remember to
ring that Bell!
you