Hi, I'm Jonny69 and this is my daily.
I’m taking a spectacularly big risk posting this here because it’s from 2005 which is sketchy on this forum. It’s also pretty modern to me; my first modern car, in fact. If you’ve been on here a long time, you might remember I used to daily some right old knackers. I was fixing up a red Anglia 105E which I eventually put into daily service and shared duty with a Ford Pop and a model T hotrod at one point.
So whatwent wrong happened?
First, 2016. An unexpected redundancy. Ruined me at the time, but not all bad, because I got an offer I couldn’t refuse to work at a well known Formula 1 team. But the commute was 57 miles each way so I had to think about a slightly more sensible car which would handle that sort of mileage. Retros were simply out of the question because I absolutely had to arrive there every morning without fail, so that’s where the Insight stepped in. At that point in time, I literally had zero knowledge about anything made after about 1965. I’d never owned anything newer than my Anglia in 20 years of driving. Mrs Seth suggested a Mk1 Insight but I’d looked into them before and they were expensive and rare. Then Dan VIP spotted a number of them for sale very close to me and it turned out there was someone importing them about 3 miles away. I’m not a big fan of inconvenience so that’s where this one came from. It was a low-ish mileage J import, immaculate condition and suddenly waiting to get registered so I could rack up some serious miles in it.
Did that for a year and a bit and then ‘upgraded’ to an A180 Merc. A mini J69 was born, changed jobs back to something more local and dumped the premium practical family car in favour of the Insight for the work and nursery run. Which is what it does now.
Only problem is it’s not low. Which Hardcore, Elk and VIP remind me about periodically. Full hovercraft mode is desirable but there are a few issues with lowering these, mainly to do with chopping up irreplaceable parts and sharing nothing with the other Hondas. However, these are close enough that they might work:
There’s a rear shock option from Gaz and they'll modify the struts if the springs don't work.
It’s not completely unmodified. Digging around on Insightcentral I’ve worked out how to basically take control of the hybrid system and control it manually. There’s the old MIMA and more recent IMAC&C systems to do this, but I’ve been able to do much of that with cobbled-up home-made boards and Arduinos that intercept the car’s signals and modify them. So far I’ve got Peter Perkins’ current hack which tricks the system into providing around 40% more electric assist and regen, and a work-in-progress Arduino-based boost device which intercepts the hybrid signal and either increases or reduces the amount of assist or regen commanded:
Both of those make it use more electric and less engine in traffic.
And I’ve also done a low speed auto-stop which fools the engine to stop every time the car comes to a stop no matter what speed you creep forward at:
It’s not difficult to take full control of the hybrid system but I haven’t got around to it yet. I should also point out that I can’t take credit for working any of this out, the information is out there mostly on Insightcentral, I’ve just re-written a lot of code from PICs to work on Arduinos and done it with what I've got lying around.
This bit is all mine though; I built an Arduino-controlled discharger so I can do semi-automated cycling on the hybrid battery without having to keep an eye on it. I do this maybe every 6 months and it keeps the battery in check and well balanced:
So yeah, it's a bit different to the points and carbs I'm normally used to, but I seem to have survived. Mainly posting this here in case it helps me actually finish some of this.
If it's too new, let me know and I'll take it down. It was a brand new car when I first joined here after all...
I’m taking a spectacularly big risk posting this here because it’s from 2005 which is sketchy on this forum. It’s also pretty modern to me; my first modern car, in fact. If you’ve been on here a long time, you might remember I used to daily some right old knackers. I was fixing up a red Anglia 105E which I eventually put into daily service and shared duty with a Ford Pop and a model T hotrod at one point.
So what
First, 2016. An unexpected redundancy. Ruined me at the time, but not all bad, because I got an offer I couldn’t refuse to work at a well known Formula 1 team. But the commute was 57 miles each way so I had to think about a slightly more sensible car which would handle that sort of mileage. Retros were simply out of the question because I absolutely had to arrive there every morning without fail, so that’s where the Insight stepped in. At that point in time, I literally had zero knowledge about anything made after about 1965. I’d never owned anything newer than my Anglia in 20 years of driving. Mrs Seth suggested a Mk1 Insight but I’d looked into them before and they were expensive and rare. Then Dan VIP spotted a number of them for sale very close to me and it turned out there was someone importing them about 3 miles away. I’m not a big fan of inconvenience so that’s where this one came from. It was a low-ish mileage J import, immaculate condition and suddenly waiting to get registered so I could rack up some serious miles in it.
Did that for a year and a bit and then ‘upgraded’ to an A180 Merc. A mini J69 was born, changed jobs back to something more local and dumped the premium practical family car in favour of the Insight for the work and nursery run. Which is what it does now.
Only problem is it’s not low. Which Hardcore, Elk and VIP remind me about periodically. Full hovercraft mode is desirable but there are a few issues with lowering these, mainly to do with chopping up irreplaceable parts and sharing nothing with the other Hondas. However, these are close enough that they might work:
There’s a rear shock option from Gaz and they'll modify the struts if the springs don't work.
It’s not completely unmodified. Digging around on Insightcentral I’ve worked out how to basically take control of the hybrid system and control it manually. There’s the old MIMA and more recent IMAC&C systems to do this, but I’ve been able to do much of that with cobbled-up home-made boards and Arduinos that intercept the car’s signals and modify them. So far I’ve got Peter Perkins’ current hack which tricks the system into providing around 40% more electric assist and regen, and a work-in-progress Arduino-based boost device which intercepts the hybrid signal and either increases or reduces the amount of assist or regen commanded:
Both of those make it use more electric and less engine in traffic.
And I’ve also done a low speed auto-stop which fools the engine to stop every time the car comes to a stop no matter what speed you creep forward at:
It’s not difficult to take full control of the hybrid system but I haven’t got around to it yet. I should also point out that I can’t take credit for working any of this out, the information is out there mostly on Insightcentral, I’ve just re-written a lot of code from PICs to work on Arduinos and done it with what I've got lying around.
This bit is all mine though; I built an Arduino-controlled discharger so I can do semi-automated cycling on the hybrid battery without having to keep an eye on it. I do this maybe every 6 months and it keeps the battery in check and well balanced:
So yeah, it's a bit different to the points and carbs I'm normally used to, but I seem to have survived. Mainly posting this here in case it helps me actually finish some of this.
If it's too new, let me know and I'll take it down. It was a brand new car when I first joined here after all...
!!!!
