IMA battery connection loose? That will give you an IMA warning DTC code on your ECU, your IMA warning indicator on your dash should have been lit up.

I am not there seeing what the SC had done to your car, so I am just guessing based on theory and experience. I suspect what the SC does to your car is to disconnect your 12V battery for a while to have the BCM memory cleared, then rev your engine to above 2.5k rpm at neutral gear to recharge the IMA and triggers the IMA recal sequence. If your car is recal issue, this should solve the problem and return the IMA function to normal, however, if it is your 12V battery going bad, the symptom will return later.

But if you ask me, if my Insight have this symptom, first thing I will check is the 12V battery capacity (not with a volt meter, you need a proper load tester for that). What does a low capacity 12v have to do with the IMA? A bad 12V drained the IMA via the DC-DC converter, and causes the BCM to looses memory thus causing frequent IMA recal, which is exactly the symptom you are seeing on your car (one minute IMA close to full, and another short moment later it falls to 0, system frequently on regen mode rather than assist, and eventually the car felt extremely sluggish because not only the 1.3l engine have to propel the car, but also have to keep charging the IMA at the same time). I think I am not going to go through it again, you can search the previous thread for detailed explanation.

If you have a 'friendly' car battery shop that you can loan a good 12V battery to you for a few days, you can run your own experiment on the above.

When Insight owner goes to SC on similar problem, all kind of different version of explanation given. Most common example is IMA system software requires update. IMA battery connection loose definitely is a new version of explanation I have heard of.

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Added on November 25, 2012, 6:23 pm

Yea, my Oct 2011 pre-facelift Insight have that piece of gasket extending out at the same spot too.