Mike's 2005 Honda Insight

The Car

Go read Insight Central to learn about the amazing, Hi-Tech Cars.

My Modifications

Future Modifications

Mine is cardboard covered with packing tape to waterproof it. Very simple and it works.

The dimensions are exactly as in the link above:
Overall Width 40cm, Height of main area 25cm, height of tab at end 13cm, width of tab 3cm.

It was simply cut out of a foam floor mat and friction fit over the grill.

Maybe the quality of the pre-heater hose from Car Parts dot Com isn't so high. The foil tubing falls apart pretty quickly. I removed it, then later repaired the material with Aluminum tape and replaced it.

It still disintegrates fairly rapidly. Eventually it will probably become entirely made of tape.

The tubing just goes under the battery and wraps over near the catalytic converter.

I didn't want to drill holes in the bumper to mount a plate. Others have attached plates to the bumper with zip ties. While investigating this possibility, I found a single threaded hole on the bottom, center of the front bumper. I made a Aluminum bracket to mount the front license plate to this hole.

I doubt that hole is stock because it is not metric thread, but it was there, so I used it.

I think I'll make some side covers out of the foam used for the grill block.

It seems that one of the less endearing features of this vehicle is the underbody has a tendency to catch on ice and snow on the road. This is quite inconvenient. The first event bent one corner of the underbody under the driver's seat down so it scooped up all of the snow on the road and packed it in between the chassis and the underbody.

Since the underbody panel was damaged and couldn't just be bolted back in place, I fashioned an Aluminum bar to secure the leading edge of the underbody on each side. I used 2 inch by 1/8 inch stock. A 4 foot piece did both sides.

Here's some photos of the modification.

Here's the driver side piece.

Once installed, here is the driver's outside end.

And the driver side center.

And the driver side inside, at the center of the car.

Here's what the passenger side looks like installed.
It is just about a mirror image of the driver side.

There are several instructional posts on Insight Central about swapping speakers. There is one in the Owners Central section, and the most recent one is in the community forum. I used all of them for reference.

When I got the car I noticed a missing fastener on the front fender liner. Everything still seemed solid, so I left t alone.

That was a mistake.

When the snow and ice hit it, it got worse quickly. I'm not sure exactly how it happened, but the remaining fasteners were gone and the fender liner must have made it's way into the the tire. Technically it's #209787 FENDER, R. FR. (INNER)

It's not too expensive to fix correctly, but it's not something I want to do in the winter. I waited for a warm day (20° F) and did a temporary repair.

I did a quick repair with a vinyl stair step tread and some zip ties.

The damage. Holes punched into the liner for attaching my patch.

The sutures in place.

Tightening down the stitches.

And Frankenstein is all sewed up.
We'll see how it holds up for the rest of the winter.