2005 Gen 1 Honda Insight

[Jonny69]

If you're not an Insight owner, you might not know that there's a handy deep storage bin under a hatch at the back of the boot:



If you are an Insight owner, you might not know that there's another compartment underneath the storage bin if you pull it out. I was surprised to hear on Insightcentral that a number of owners didn't know about this:



Under the black sheet is the spare wheel, a jack and a small toolkit:







These were were the days when manufacturers hadn't worked out that to save a bit of cost weight, all they had to do was bin off the spare wheel and jack and replace it with a can of instant tyre repair. This is also a very handy space to put more batteries in if you're EV-converting an Insight... Anyway, why am I telling you this? None of the interesting reasons above. I thought I'd check the air in the spare tyre since it had been a while. Helped by my 4 year old, hence the skewiff photos. Opportunity to use my unnecessarily expensive tyre pump:



The car is still not low and I still haven't gone down for a cup of tea with bilkob who lives practically over the road from where I work. I've even seen him twice this week: he tapped on my window when he came past on his bike and then I saw him floating through town in his Citroen. I like tea as well, I should probably do something about that.

[Jonny69]

Usual tldr warning; I didn't sell it in the end and had to get a new door mirror. Here's the long version:

This was going to go up for sale before I re-insured it but life got in the way and I couldn't get a replacement in time. Nor could I actually decide what I wanted to replace it with, and everything else was just going to be a bit worse for what I use the car for. So it's re-insured for another year and MOT is on Monday. Sorry for going quiet ammo as you had first dibs.

Just one spanner in the works. Week before last it looks like the council smashed my mirror off when they were mowing the grass out the front. I park right up against the grass so next door can get their second car off the drive. The council mow right up to the cars and cover them in grass, not a problem, but I reckon they accidentally clipped the mirror off when turning the mower round and probably didn't notice (they use big 60" ride-on mowers).





Why is that a spanner in the works? Problem is, because this is a pretty rare car, finding things like mirror assemblies can be problematic. When it last happened in ~2016, it took me about 3 months to locate another one and I had to get it sent over from the US. It was silver, though, which was pretty lucky. I seem to remember it didn't quite fit. The angle of something or other on the mount was different between LHD and RHD versions to suit the different the viewing angle from the other side of the car and from my driver's seat it didn't view down the side of the car. I couldn't remember what I did or used to make it work, or if I actually just used the shell in the end. I kind of needed a UK one to be sure. Even with the aerospace structural adhesives I have access to at work, my mirror was a bit too smashed to fix. Nothing on UK or US eBay, nothing from the usual UK users on Insightcentral and no cars that we knew of being broken in the UK. I tried to join the UK Insight Owners on Facebook, but I don't use Facebook so they kept refusing my join requests with my empty blatantly spammer's profile. That was the spanner in the works.

When I took the old one off, I saw a couple of little mods I'd made which suggested I'd got the US shell and internals on the original door mount. I trawled Insightcentral for US cars being broken and as luck would have it found an ad for a silver car from a couple of months ago. 5 days and £160 later and I've got a whole silver mirror assembly sat in my lap.



Wow, chances of that happening were pretty much zero.



With the two mounts side-by-side it's obvious that the angles are different. US LHD door mount is the chipped-up one with leprosy on the right. The LHD mounting mechanism has an odd locating pin on the bottom which doesn't actually locate in anything but fouls a rib on the RHD door mount. I could see in the RHD door mount that I'd filed the rib back to clear it. So with a bit of luck, it'll be as simple as that.

Meanwhile, I've got a bit of floorboard screwed in the hole to keep thieving little fingers out the car.

[thebaron]

I always admired these. I had the chance to have a good look around one a few weeks back and it has strongly stoked my want for one.

They really are a fantastic example of good design.

[Jonny69]

Lunchtime fix. First, clean out the hole:



That's much better. Then, stick mirror in hole and cross fingers about angle of view:



Perfect, basically. I'll be able to see properly to drive home and I can deal with the dingly dangly wire later when I take the door panel back off. Really relieved.

[Davey]

Great post but all I can focus on in how much effort you put into the finish on the temporary wooden hole blocker. That's got more patience in it that the entirety of my daily.

[Jonny69]

Oct 28, 2022 15:54:22 GMT Davey said:

Great post but all I can focus on in how much effort you put into the finish on the temporary wooden hole blocker. That's got more patience in it that the entirety of my daily.

Haha! Well it had to cover all the holes and I wasn’t sure how long it was going to be on there for

[Jonny69]

Something has worn out stroke broken on muh Hunduh uhmuhguhd! This is literally the first thing I’ve had to fix and the car has done 107k miles!

Windscreen wiper sweep was starting to get a bit small. I had a look online and apparently this is a thing and you just replace the bushes on the mechanism. It’s even accessible from the outside of the car, so no need to take the entire contents of the dashboard out like I expect you would on a French car. Bushes ordered, planned to do this over Christmas. Mostly didn’t, but for once it was because I didn’t have the right tools rather than because of having to dad.

I bought these to enable wiper arm removalment:



I’m slightly allergic to cheap Chinese eBay tools but I figured I’d only need these once. With the arms off, I could work my way round all the clips on this panel…



…and wriggle it free. None of the clips broke. Most odd.

It was at this point, I discovered Honda has won the muck trap competition. I have never seen muck, slime and crud caked in like this before. If this was a steel car it would have some serious rot issues by now. I’m my case, however, it will simply wipe clean.







Anyway, the bush causing the problem was quite obvious:



It has completely disintegrated.

It started raining again and I had to run for cover at this point. Maybe another exciting instalment tomorrow or am I driving to work on Monday with no wipers? Prace bets!

[Jonny69]

Well it’s still raining. Worse than yesterday so that means I’m getting wet. Interim update while I wait for it to ease up a bit.

I took some pics to remind myself what way up everything went and brought the mechanism inside so I could work in the dry:







I got a tablecloth out to protect the table. This one will do because it’s not ironed:



The damage to the bush was immediately obvious so I started with that one:



It’s basically snipped itself through the bottom of the bush. The new one needed a small slot to be filed so that the bush did not turn. Dab of grease and fitted with circlip:



The other three are in perfectly good condition:



I’m much of the opinion that if it ain’t broke etc, and these definitely don’t need fixin. So I just cleaned them up, re-greased them and popped them back together.

That bit all went ok. It’s only now I realise I’ve made a massive bungle. None of these tapers are keyed and I didn’t have the wipers in the park position when I took the mechanism off. That means I’ve got no idea which way the rockers need to be facing when I put it back on. I’m going to have to make an educated guess based on the motor rotation, do a bit of trial and error and probably run the car without the plastic cover panel on until I’ve run the wipers a couple of times. Bah.

[Jonny69]

Look at that, I got it right first time! Skills.

Raining again though, so I’ve run inside. Let’s see if I can do it again when the panel is back on…

[Jonny69]

Yup, nailed it. I’m happy with that. Only issue is I managed to crack the plastic vanity panel putting it back on. Luckily you don’t seem to be able to see it with the bonnet down and the clips hold it all in place. Probably regret saying that once it’s dried out.

Speaking of which - thunder outside now, so I got finished just in the nick of time.

So I’m just finishing a hybrid battery discharge cycle and we’re back on the road.