Rebuilt my Element

I bought this E 04 awd 5spd many years ago from a Guy who was looking to buy a different car to Uber with. Uber didn’t see the E as suited for Uber. Don’t know if it the suicide doors, mileage issue Over 230k or it just needed a lot of work to make it road worthy by their standards.

Was able to get it for about 1k. It was in need of much repairs. Back window was shattered, exhaust rotted apart, check engine light, struts were blown. Took my scanner with me and had no serious codes, clutch and engine tan beautifully. I told him well I’ll need to spend a lot to make it road worthy but realistically the price he wanted at the time it’s a parts car.
Anyways, being a Honda tech, fixed what I needed and got prices a little less than cost with employee prices.

My brother was in need of a car back then where I let him use it until 240k. The engine jumped time. So it sat behind his house for a few years before I decided to get the motivation to fix it up. I couldn’t bring myself to junk it being a rare unicorn version of the Element it was.
With winter coming and the need to cart kids more often due to recent Divorce my S2000 don’t get driven during winter and or with salt in the ground.

I was able to find a used engine for cheap in trade of $100 bucks and valve adjustment job on a friend that owns an element and had recently bought another E to take parts for his and part out the rest.
So I started the engine swap. But doing so is like opening up a can of worms. I ran into situations like I should replace things while I’m here like clutch or finding out that I need to replace parts like axles because they were ready to snap. Here’s a list of things I’ve done and now I have a perfectly running almost newish high mileage E. I originally wanted to stay true oem, but even at my pricing, Honda oem is still expensive so I opted to run many aftermarket using Rock Auto. Pics are only most but not all parts that I replaced.

Engine
Oil pan, valve cover gaskets, valve adjust. Vtec solenoid assembly and gasket, spark plugs, coil packs, Throttle body (cam for cruise was broken), remove and reseal leaking tensioner cover, PS pump, Alternator, Ac compressor assembly, starter, water pump, belt tensioner, all associated vac hoses and coolant hoses, Front/rear/side/trans

Cooling
radiator, thermostat and housing, coolant cross over pipe pipe (rotted and started to leak), rad hoses, ac Coomdenser, both Radiator fans, ECT sensor.

Trans
clutch, flywheel, TB bearing, pilot bearing, Axle seals Clutch lines from master to slave cylinder, slave cylinder, Flushed clutch master, drain and fill trans few times

Steering/Suspension/driveline
power steering rack(fast leak out driver side seal). Ps rack lines, Ps Feed and return lines, Outter tie rods, lower ball joints, compliance bushings, Front strut assemblies, (Broken/rotted/leaking) rear strut assemblies (clunk over bumps, Front end links, rear endlinks,
Front axles, (rotted at rubber dampers, ready to snap), All Rotors, pads, parking brake shoes.

Wheels
Honda Oem HFP 18 wheels mounted on biggest size tire you could go without rubbing or trimming. Nexan Nferra 255/55/18


audio
Oem volume didn’t work right. You’d try to adjust volume up and it go down, you’d try to make it softer and it would crank it full volume and wouldn’t decrease.
Replaced with a Sony Xva-ax3250 6.9 touch with Apple/android car play, Added a rydeen duo 3 backup camera, wired it for reverse activation and can be turned on anytime from the head unit so I can check on trailer while driving.
Replaced door speakers with Alpine 6.5 S65C and tweeters and left factory sub alone. I got to tell you this head unit and speakers really made the sound system come alive and didn’t know how good the oem sub could sound.

Evap.
This I spent some time chasing as one problem led to another problem until I weeded out all the problems.
After I got it running I had problems when refueling. I couldn’t pump fast and the pump would click off. At the time i would have a P0497 low purge flow. Smoke testing the system I found the end of the purge line where it goes from under the back of the E to the canister, Honda didn’t coat the end of the line with the protective lining that the rest of the purge line is coved with. The end section is just bare metal and rotted. So I cut that section off and used 1/2 rubber hose to slide over the good section of the line to the canister.

I was still having refueling problems and code was still there. Smoked the system again and found a small pin hole in one of the lines that went to the filler neck. Cut that section off and replaced that with rubber hose. Rechecked, mil and problem still there. This time after smoking the system, saw no leaks I took a vaccume handheld pump a scan tool to command the CVS valve on and verified there was no leaks and held pressure from the front of the purge line to the rear. Went to check the purge solenoid with hand pump and found that it wouldn’t hold vaccume with the purge valve commanded on or off. Replaced the purge valve, made sure it held vaccume when it was off and that it didn’t when it was commanded on. Cleared light and went to get some gas. I now could refuel normally. Couple days go by and the light pops on again.

This time it was a P2422 cvs stuck closed. Took out the cvs valve and physically looked at the valve while commanding it on and off with a scan tool to make sure it was working, which it was. I proceeded to remove all lines and blowing them out with compressed air to make sure they weren’t blocked up. Removed the vent drain tube which sits just above the gas tank on driver side to make sure a spider didn’t happen to build a nest in there blocking the drain.

This light came on randomly. Some times it would come on shortly after clearing code and 10 minutes of driving, or I could go days before light would trip. Every time I would check something, I’d clear the code and run a evap function test with my Snap-on scanner and sometimes it would pass, Other times it would fail. I would keep a handheld with me and knew when the light would pop on because the p0492 would show up as a pending DTC.

I ended up taking another evap canister that I had saved in the shop and went to swap it out. Upon removal I noticed that the canister felt rather heavy. Comparing the 2, the one I removed was significantly heavier than the one I went to swap in. After swapping in the other canister, cleared the light ran the evap test, passed and mil has been off ever since.
I got curious and decided to open up the canister (which I don’t recommend because it’s very messy and dusty from the charcoal). I’ve found that I had solid chunks of charcoal that would shift. Sometimes it would completely block the CVS valve even though the valve operates and throw the P2422 code and sometimes there would be enough flow where it wouldn’t throw the code.

So given the nature of the hard refills and not knowing when the tank was full, the overfilling filled the canister causing it to harden. My only assumption was that my brother had the refueling problem when it was in his possession and topped off until it over flowed from the filler neck.
Well that’s my story. Thanks for taking the time to read.