I BOUGHT THE HOLY TOASTER TRINITY CHEAP HONDA ELEMENT

On today's episode of WatchJRGO, I've finally done it. I've finally collected the Holy Trinity of supercars. I know a lot of people work their entire lives for something like this. Some people never even get there, but we've done it, and I can't wait to show it to you all. What is going on, guys? I am WatchJRGO, and today, like I said, we are here in my shop with the last, the final piece of the Holy Trinity. Now, over the years, I've owned an insane collection of cars, but I've always been chasing the Holy Trinity, right? Three insane cars that most people just can't fathom owning all three of them at once. I don't even own all three of them at once. It was too expensive. Now, I only own the last piece of the puzzle here, but you know, between all of the twin-turbo Audis, the Bentleys, the Maseratis, the McLarens, the BMWs, I mean, just insane stuff, we finally have acquired a 2004 Honda Element with real-time four-wheel drive and a manual. That's right, all-wheel drive and a five-speed manual with one of my favorite engines of all time. My second favorite, probably. It's LS, and then the K-Series. It's got the K24 under the hood. Let's check this thing out. No, it's not a P1 like some YouTubers or a 918 like the same YouTuber, or even a LaFerrari, which I don't know if any YouTubers own. I have owned the Cube, the XB, and now the Element. We have done a ton of work on both. If you guys remember, my Cube needed a transmission. I mean, come on, it was pretty obvious that the Cube would need a transmission, and the XB, well, it was stanced, slammed to the ground, everything was broken, and we fixed all of that, and then we sold the XB, and I think I might have even owned XB2, I just don't remember, and now I own the only generation Honda made this car from 2003 until 2011, and they never actually refreshed it. Sure, a facelift. Sure, they offered painted cladding, but it was just one generation of the Element, and then it was gone forever. Oh, we didn't know what we were gonna be missing at the time. They just pulled the plug. But this is my new Element. I haven't even driven it yet. We are gonna discover this car together. One of my friends listed it on Facebook, and I was like, man, I have to have it. Can you deliver it? And he said yes. I was literally going out of town 20 minutes later, and he showed up with it, and that is the story of how I acquired this car. It was dropped off directly into my driveway. I haven't even looked at it yet. I didn't even realize that somebody, well, used the bathroom on this, or painted it with spray paint. It's probably the second one. So this is it, the last of the toasters. Let's check this thing out. So 2004, it's only the second year they built these, and it was still pretty highly optioned. Originally, there were only two trim levels, and then they added a third. I think this is still the highest trim level they built at the time because it has the all-wheel drive. It has some other weird options that come with the all-wheel drive. Let's check this out. So first of all, we're gonna do a quick walk around here. Big old mirrors that fold up. Honestly, looks kind of nice. All of this cladding, insane amount of cladding coming around this thing. Four-wheel disc brakes, as you can see, and the wheels on it, they fit perfectly. It's just the right wheel for the rugged look of the element here. They are 16s. Let's see, these are 22570R16s. The tires on this are actually in good shape for the mileage. The mileage on this thing is out of control. 334,000 on the clock. So it has been well, well, well, well, well, well, well, well used, and that's the original K-Series under the hood. Another testament to that K-Series superiority there. Personally, I think it's the best Honda engine bar none. It can make insane power on stock internals, and then if you guys remember my last K-Series on my Ariel Atom, they built it to make 900 horsepower. But if we wanted, we could literally just bolt on a manifold and a turbo on this, and it'll hold 500 for a very, very, very long time. That's crazy talk out of a little four-cylinder. And it's coil-on plug, it's one of my favorites. Although in this, we'll stop talking about the dream. It makes 160, 160. So 160 horsepower, 160 foot-pounds of torque, and you're losing a bit of that through this hydraulically actuated all-wheel drive system. Now, it's not, they don't even call this all-wheel drive. Like I said, Honda calls it real-time four-wheel drive. Basically, this thing is front-wheel drive until it detects slippage from the front, and then it just kicks in the rear drive. So for, I don't know, 99% of the time you're driving this car, it's front-wheel drive. I'm a big cladding fan. I love the whole cladding generation. You know, I love the avalanche. I love a good late model avalanche with the painted cladding. You know, that was when cladding was going away, and this basically ended production when cladding was going away, but they did offer this fully painted later, not in these years, but later on they offered it fully painted, and of course, as we know, everything else that had cladding basically got fully painted as well. Now it's coming back. It's coming back hard in the 2024 plus cars. No fog lights, even though it looks like it, but you can probably just run a hole saw through there, and I bet there's factory fog lights that drop in. Old school halogen headlights coming around here. What's going on here? Let's see if we can fix it right now. Nope, that's just element things. We're not gonna worry about that. We got a little crack in the bumper right here, probably rubbed on a few things in those 300,000 miles, and this piece of cladding, or maybe the bumper, got a little cabinet screw action there. We also are missing a wheel well liner over here. I think that's for quick access to working on the engine. Maybe the rack kind of looks like that might be a possibility there, because some of the wheel well liners still exist. That tire is beat. Some of these tires look great, but this one tire is beat. Kind of interesting there. And like I said, those wheels look like they're gonna clean up great. This whole thing looks like it's gonna clean up, except for the hood. The hood's a different color. It's pretty obvious. I'm sure it's also obvious to you guys. This thing is filthy, just absolutely filthy, but somebody's tinted it. The tint looks good. Coming around the back, we have these cool wraparound tail lights that offer a lot of the styling on the Element. We also have this really cool antenna. I've always loved this off-centered antenna. Rear window wiper here, and I thought it was unlocked, but let's go ahead and unlock it just in case. I think the battery is dead in this remote. Nothing ever happens, but this remote here, there we go. Hey, and it has a tailgate. A lot of people love their tailgates. I love them on Land Rovers and stuff, so it is cool to have a tailgate on this, this little latch right here, and we've got a bench seat, or an easy way to load whatever we want. This is kind of the coolest alternative to a minivan, don't you guys think? I think we're four foot wide. Let's check. Ooh, not quite. All right, well, the Honda Odyssey, the Pacifica, everything outperforms the Element is what we just learned. It is only edge-to-edge right here, 42 inches, so you can't put full sheets of plywood in the Element. Very sad. It's one of my favorite things about minivans. They pretty much all have 48 inches of floor space side to side, so you can load full sheets in them most of the time, and the Element, unfortunately, just let us down just a little bit. What it lacks in side-to-side cargo space, it makes up for in many other cool ways. Check out these awesome compartments. We've got the tool kit down in here. Looks like that's Honda original, lug tool, all that fun stuff. We've got 12-volt power right here in the back, a little auxiliary outlet. We've got more storage over here with Sealite 7443s, huh. Don't know where those go, but it came with extra bulbs. We have under-floor storage right here. Look at that, we've got a full donut, not an inflatable tire, very cool. And also the back seats flip up into the side, like safari seats, kind of like a Land Rover, so you've got tons of cargo room in the back. I mean, this is a huge space. It's a truck-size space here in the back. And look at that ceiling height, it's massive. And then we can talk about the other weird option, this gigantic rear moonroof, which is very cool, but also really weird. What a weird choice, you know. The back seat is really less occupied than any other seat, 99% of the time, again, and it could have had a front sunroof. So kind of a weird choice, but part of having the all-wheel drive in these early ones was getting all the options and all the options included that rear moonroof. So that's kind of cool. And let's head towards the front. Maybe we'll flip these seats down later just to check them out. I do like the elastic cord here on the seat back as well, so you can stash some stuff there, but that is the back of the Element. This was sold at Airport Honda. I don't know where that's at, but I'd rather have the Element badge than that. We do have wraparound glass here. It kind of looks like a continuous piece of glass, a little bit like the Cube. Obviously, I love the offset window in the Cube, and I think this wraparound glass here looks very cool as well. Toasters are sweet, aren't they? All right, let's hop inside and check this out. So first of all, this door opens almost 90 degrees. Wild, right? Check that out. So a massive entry into the driver's seat. And then also here is the rear door. Check this out. Suicide doors, and these open 90 degrees too. So you have this massive side opening on both sides. You can run through this thing full speed if you slide the front seats forward. Like, there's so much room to get through this car. It is outrageous. Now, if you look, these sills are also gigantic because the Element is pillarless. This door creates the B-pillar when it closes. They consider it to be structural once it's closed, but it has massively reinforced sills down here on both sides to help carry the weight of the vehicle. Cup holders are integrated into the seats there. Everything is manual. There is no power on this except for windows and locks. This is old school loaded. Old, old, old school loaded. Only auto on the driver's side. Power mirror controls. We'll walk through the door real quick. We got the locks. They still work. All of them work. We've got the rear window lockout, the mirror controls again, and of course the auto window for the driver, non-auto for the passenger, and some storage. Not good storage. Pretty useless storage, really, because you can't even fit a water bottle in there. You can't fit a Yeti in there. This is a very old school car design. Nowadays, every single car that you get in is basically the same, right? They're all well designed. They're very ergonomic. They know exactly what the customers want, and it's a very easy formula to just go out there and repeat. You can make small styling changes or big styling changes, but you deliver the same interior, and it's exactly what everybody expects, and it works really, really well. Modern cars are just good, but this old stuff, it's a very, very different era, and you were probably lucky to have this barely a map pocket in the door. What are you supposed to put in there? An umbrella might fit. One of those small umbrellas might fit. It'll probably also get stuck because it tapers down, but beyond that, gigantic front windows. This piece of glass is huge, and this piece of glass here pops out like the old rear minivan ones, so that's always cool. It'd be even cooler if it had the minivan electric motor with the little cam that opens up. I love those to death. You can actually adjust the height to the driver's seatbelt, which is pretty cool. Let's see if we can get that all the way back up there, and it looks like this speaker grill, okay, fixed, and this door has a water bottle holder. All right, heading inside. Let's see what else we've got here. We've got some dirty old seats. I mean, 300,000 miles. I paid a lot for this, guys. I think I paid $3,000 for it, and it is salvage titled and 300,000 miles, but they don't exist anymore. Like, elements are gone, and this one is a manual all-wheel drive, and it's supposed to drive great. Now, it does have some problems, and we're gonna fix them. They're on the list. I'm kind of excited to fix this thing because it's a Honda. It should be fun, easy fixes. Very DIY-friendly vehicle all the way around, but let's jump in here and check everything else out. So, manual sliding seats right there. You do have your own armrest, which is very cool. You gotta love the OG armrest. It'd be really good if we could clean this gunk off of that material there. A super simple instrument cluster with just a tag, Speedo, mileage under the Speedo, fuel, and coolant temp. That's it. That's all you get, but it's a cool cluster, like, kind of a cool layout there. We have super simple light controls here, lights on. Ooh, it has LEDs, aftermarket LEDs in the housings there. That's probably what was in that bag. We've got some turn signal action, high beams. That's it. That's the end of the stock. We have normal wipers, you know, up for miss, interval, low-high, rear wiper, and rear wiper spray. That's it. That's the whole control setup. This stuff, I did check just as soon as I got in. I tried the volume control. It seems like the volume control is dead, which is very sad, because it's a factory head unit. How is it dead? So, maybe it's got a bad clock spring. I don't know if it works, though. And then we have the cruise controls over here, which we haven't tested yet. Speaking of cruise control, cruise master down here. Hood release. Go ahead and open that up so we can go see the K-series. And it's a three pedal. And then I'm gonna assume that there's no telescope. Tilt only on the wheel, and it's manual tilt. All right, coming over here, we have the radio, which is a radio. It's nothing else. It has a CD player, but it is nothing else. No aux in. Ugh, it's gonna be hard to deal with this. We might have to put a radio in it. And then, of course, very epic climate control knobs, kind of like the Xterra, a lot of other tough looking vehicles. I'm a big fan of the wheel looking. I honestly think that's the inverse of the wheel itself on the climate control knobs, so. Oh yeah, super nice. They move nice. All electronic, not cable. Love that. Hazards. Hazards be hazarding. They're all LED swapped. You can see how fast they turn on and off right there. And they're very amber. And five speed. And reverse. Ooh, how do you reverse? Do you have to push in? Maybe the clutch needs to be in for reverse. That's about all I can guess. Storage over here above the glove compartment. A glove compartment with nothing in it. Vent on off controls are actually pretty sick right there. It is a two way audio system up front with a tweeter in the pillar and I think a five and a quarter in the door. And then the craziest thing about the Element, since we're here, since we're under the shifter right now, this is the factory subwoofer. And it kind of gets after it. Even on the radio, kind of gets after it. So this whole thing here is the subwoofer enclosure. And then in the middle, we've got the e-brake, triple cup holders, and a little storage. That's about it. This is a very short tour. This thing truly, even though this is the loaded one, has nothing. No options. Huge sun visors right here. Slide outs on them as well. No mirror, no light. Does this one even have a mirror? Okay, the passenger got a mirror. No light again. We'll flip all these back. Full manual rear view mirror right there. No auto-dimming, no nothing on the mirror. Ooh, look at that. You push this button to flip open this door to get into this storage compartment that you can see into at all times. So you can't put anything really small in here. It'll fall right through. And then of course, reading lights, all LED, gotta cool. And door lights. The door lights, it looks like the switch might be a little flaky there. Now this Element did belong to a mechanic friend of mine, which is why everything looks like it's a little greasy. He said he drove this back and forth to Florida all the time. So I actually think it's probably pretty solid. He just wanted it gone. And he was like, man, it's got a K-series. You're basically buying it for the price of a running K-series. And I was like, you're right. I know, I'm definitely overpaying for what this should be, but at the same time, it's not something you can go pick up for less than what I paid. Also, you can't just go buy another Element. It's just hard to find these things. And this one, run, drive, and the right price, even if it's a little broken, I was in. This thing is filthy under the hood. We need to start with a bath and a full scrub of the engine bay for sure. But there is one of my favorite engines hanging out. It looks like it's close to needing valve cover gaskets. You can see a little wetness coming down from the top there, power steering pump, maybe the return leaking a little bit there or the input into the pump, the suction line. But other than that, power steering pump itself might be leaking a bit, which is expensive on Hondas. That's why nobody ever fixes it. You just put fluid in them forever. It's too much money to fix. It's more than the car's worth to fix the power steering pump normally. And then clearly it's got a used battery in it, which is a little sketchy, and it was already a little hard to start there after sitting for like five days. So I bet it needs a battery immediately. And that's it. This thing's just simple under the hood. We probably got some brake fluid that's shot. It looks like it's black. Come on. Oh yeah. Brake fluid's beyond gone. We probably got clutch fluid that's beyond gone. Oh yeah. Super, super toast. The air intake fell out here. The horn just snaps on. There we go, fixed. That probably adds a half horsepower. It's got like a velocity stack going on here. These things also use a big old cartridge filter that's sitting in that housing here, but there's not much else to talk about, right? The transmission should technically never, ever, ever break. It might need a clutch every once in a while, but you know, that's just the cost of doing business. Other than that, it looks like we should just do fluids on this thing. Let's see. Honestly. Okay. It's not black and it's right on the line. Guys, when Vtech kicks in on this baby, you're not gonna know what hit you. Here's our replacement hood sticker from a salvage yard here, Gordon Auto Body. I don't know how it's the wrong color altogether. It looks like they spray painted it this color. It's about time to head out and drive the Element, but first we need to find, you know, the most important thing for each drive here. Some beats that are Element worthy. And you know, I kind of assume there's only one thing we can listen to in an Element. And that is, yeah, that's the answer right there. And also of great importance, we need this key to work. This is the key that you want to use because it feels like a modern car instead of this antique setup over here. So I pulled the key apart real quick. You pull out this little Phillips and then Honda puts in this little puck and that puck right there has a weird battery in it, right? A 1616, not something you see very often. And it's not working, but when I put the meter on it, we have 3.2 volts, which means that battery is literally brand new. And for some reason it doesn't work. So let's put this thing back together real quick and see if there's any difference. Although I don't expect there to be, maybe let's clean it up with alcohol too. Well, there's nothing to clean. This thing uses real old school microswitches. So we can't do the usual, which is just cleaning up some contacts with alcohol that have like that magnetic contact. It doesn't use that. I do wonder, this looks like the transponder here, but is it also the antenna? I think this is just a transponder pill. So it won't start at all without that guy right there. I cleaned the battery contacts. It looks like there's been water in there based on that, but it's still dead, totally dead, every button. So we got to find a new pill, this whole assembly here. Until then, let's put the key back together. Very sad. Does it work? Oh, I'm in my element now. Yes. Did you guys know the entire element turns into a bed? Look at this, continuous. And it even has little straps over here to hold the seat belts out of your way. So you can sleep laid all the way out through them. Incredible, it's like, it's body shaped. You could definitely use a pillow in here, but man, this is maybe the best car camping experience I've ever seen. Look at this, it's comfy. It's straight up comfy. Oh, a pillow and you're set. All right, let's put her back together. Need some cleaning. If we clean this thing up, it will be a one. And honestly, even if you never use them as a bed, having your own tilt adjustment for these back seats right here is unbelievably nice. So the rear passengers can recline the back seats to whatever they want. Super comfy. All right, let's take it out. We haven't even made it out of the driveway yet, but we got a couple of things to mention. It's 100% out of gas, that's the first thing to mention. Second thing, the check engine light is on, so we need to scan it. Third thing, I couldn't see this in the dark, but it has aux in, eighth inch aux in right there. Very cool. And it's got another 12 volt outlet right there. Now, it's time to take this out for a drive, but we're not just driving it for no reason. The boys at Mass Project, they did the lighting design for my big shop, the 20,000 square foot one. They did the lighting design for this shop. They are the reason that all of these videos always look incredible. And they were gonna do Hoovy's lighting design as well, but they sent me a care package from Canada of pure maple syrup. They sent me so many cans of this, and they said, can you deliver a couple to the Car Ninja and Hoovy? And I was like, absolutely. So let's go put gas in this. Let's go to the Car Ninjas. Let's go to Tyler's. Let's go on a mission in the element. I'm excited to drive this thing. Oh, the seatbelt feels like 300,000 miles. It is stiff. Here we go. It seems like it drives great. It's so light on its feet. That super powered power steering right there. Love that. Transmission, solid. The power windows were fast and smooth like we would expect from a Honda. And there's no buffeting with the windows down. You guys aren't getting bombarded, right? It feels incredible in here. Good power windows that don't buff it. It's a lost art. Every new car, you roll the windows down, and it's a terrible experience. So it's pretty cool to be in something like this where they really thought about air pressure and not making the ride terrible when the windows are down. Because it's fun to drive around with the windows down. It's not fun to drive a manual with one hand. I kind of love this super angled gas door here because the gas cap always drops into its holder. You don't have to like finagle with it. It's kind of perfect. Ergonomics, baby, ergonomics. Well, I do think the clock spring might be bad, but the cruise control actually works. The volume, the radio controls don't work. And we've got an airbag light, which also makes me think clock spring, obviously. But cruise works, which is sick. And we have a nasty rotational noise out of the rear. It's definitely one of the rear hubs. So we're gonna throw a hub at it. Other than that, I just put three quarters of a tank in it for $20, which is unbelievable. Even my F-150 takes nearly 100 to fill up. So it's crazy to almost fill up a car with seven gallons and a handful of dollars. Loving that. All right, guys, Tyler's not here, so we're just gonna leave him his pure maple syrup. It's a perfect spot for it. All right, here's my Honda Element tanks. You can tell that it was based on the CRV underneath. You can really tell it's slow. It's slow enough that we're not even gonna do a zero to 60 pull. I will humor you with a 40 to 60 pull. That's about as good as it's gonna get in this thing. Also, that noise, the seats or whatever squeaking in the back is outrageous. Oh, what a terrible noise. But we can figure out what that is. We just need to sit back there while somebody else drives this thing around and we'll sort out the noise. But yeah, let's make a little baby pull just to see how slow it is. Okay, so second and 40. And let's go. Oh, wow, torque steer. Well, hey, at least the clutch doesn't slip. I guess it's lightweight enough because the speedometer did move. It is a K-series. I love the engine, but this thing's definitely not fast in any sense of the word, especially compared to even the most cheap, basic, modern cars. It also could use an alignment. The steering wheel's off by a notch. I'm sure you can see that this is straight and this is turning. So yeah, it definitely could use an alignment. There's also a lot of road noise. I fully attribute that to these cheap all-terrain tires. I think it looks good on cheap all-terrains, but I'm sure that's our problem. And also that wheel hub noise from the rear is not helping, but the whole transmission works great and the parking brake even works. I guess there's only one other question here. We could use a little handling test, but instead let's just go for body roll. It's got a bit of body roll, but it's not bad. It's not make you sick body roll. I bet it turns in all right, but you have to really set those turns early to make them work. Got a delivery for you. Straight from Canada. Should we crack one open with a screwdriver and drink it? Them boys get all that syrup in them, they get all antsy and they're fancy. What's this? So Mass Project sent me a care package from Canada and said, bring you and Hoobie some. It's pure maple syrup. Have you had pure maple syrup? No. Oh, it's way different. You know, the store-bought kind is like 100% sugar and super thick. This stuff is like water and delicious. It's what they have at Cracker Barrel. I want to have Ben try it first. He's the test subject. He's the guinea pig, yeah. It's good, don't worry. Have you tried it? I've had it before, but they sent me like, they sent 10 cans. I was like, that's a lifetime. Lifetime supply. Thank you, thank you. We'll give it a try. Yeah, what are you working on? Motor mounts on a lovely Audi. Sounds fun. Yeah, well, they're not bad. Yeah. All right, guys, delivery complete. Let's hop back in the Element and get this thing back to the shop. I left the lights on. Good thing they're all LEDs. And here are our codes. Weirdly, it's the same code. Oh, oh, because we have current and history. I was like, why do we have these code duplications here? But over here, it tells us that temporary, permanent. Different brands on the Autel do this differently. Some of them say current and some of them say history. And then some of them say permanent and some of them say temporary. So sometimes you don't just notice it right out of the gate, but it looks like we might just need oxygen sensor bank two, right? So secondary, secondary oxygen sensor there. We had a battery voltage failure for ABS, which I do fully believe because it starts a little bit slow, like you could use a battery. And then we have open or increased resistance in driver airbag inflator, which I assume is this guy. And then we also have open or increased resistance in driver seatbelt tensioner, which is weird because it works perfectly. And then we have please refer to vehicle service manual, which I bet is crash data in the SRS computer. So we need to pull that, have it reset and replace both of those guys. None of that actually seems outrageous just to get the airbag light off of there. Maybe $300, right? You're probably looking at a hundred and change for this airbag, a hundred for the seatbelt tensioner and $99 to go have the crash data deleted. And then of course, I think it needs a battery and an O2 sensor. So what are you looking at there? 600 bucks fixes this whole thing at 300,000 miles. Crazy. This, the element also, if you notice under the hood uses a super small battery. It's one of the cheapest batteries you can buy. We're clearing it. It's not like it's gonna fix anything, but why not? I've been cleaning up the interior with some baby wipes here for, I don't know, the last 10 minutes because this thing actually scans super, super slow. Something about the Honda OBD setup is one of the slowest on earth. But I've been wiping down everything I can with baby wipes, which is one of the cheat codes to cleaning up cars. Take a look at how nasty, that's the e-brake handle. Gross. And those are the steering wheel, which are absolutely filthy. This one was a bit of the door panel. The door panel just keeps, I've cleaned it already multiple times trying to get the grease out of the texture. Woo, a lot of work cleaning up a car at 300,000 miles and it belonged to a mechanic, that's for sure. This was probably the parts runner, but it is cleaning up. So the coolest thing about baby wipes is they take pop off like you wouldn't believe. Anywhere that there's like drink drips, it just comes off instantaneously. And you can tell everything was baked into this. So there you have it guys, that is my new to me, the final piece of the Holy Trinity, my 2004 Honda Element all wheel drive. And honestly, I drove it all over just now and had a lot of fun. I really love the system and it doesn't sound incredible or anything like that, but the subwoofer being right beside you is super nice and it works great. The AC works great, everything in it works great, except for possibly that O2 sensor, a wheel hub, and I don't know, we could look at that low voltage code for the ABS. It doesn't seem like it's affecting anything. And of course all the airbags that went off at one point and nobody put them back. Or maybe they did put them back and the clock springs bad, which is a very high possibility because the steering wheel controls don't work right. So there's always that option too. So not a lot wrong with it. And I mean, it was cheap, it's cool. Plus an unbelievable drive train with the K24. That is it for today, guys. Thank you so much for watching. Don't forget to head on over to shop. Watchjr.com for cool shirts just like this. And please like, share, subscribe, do whatever you want to do. And I will talk to you next time. All right, time to take this thing back out and get pizza. I mean, it looks like a pizza oven, right? This is what the Domino's DXP could have been. I mean, I think they'd already been discontinued, but think about it. If this would have been the DXP car, the whole thing could have been a true pizza oven. Not just the side window.