I work at a Honda/Acura repair shop, and we only have a handful of Elements that we see regularly. We recently had a new customer bring his 2003 5-speed 2WD EX Element in for some service/repair work. I take a special interest in Elements because I own one, and I like to see how well (or not?) they're holding up once they get older with more mileage.

I can honestly say that this was one of THE scariest/shakiest/uneasiest feeling cars I've ever driven. Every single motor/trans mount was busted (seriously), both axle inner joints were crazy wobbly, front rotors were crazy warped, and overall it was just a really junky feeling vehicle. The car had only 163k miles on it and it was making me wonder what someone would have to do to one of these to make it wear so badly. It's not a 4WD, but maybe he still liked to take it off road a lot?

Anyways one of the things that I found scariest (as an Element owner myself) was how flimsy the doors felt when closing them. You know how the back doors close first, then the front? The back doors sort of act as the "pillar" that the front doors couple with to keep side impact safety tight, but on this car when you closed the doors it felt like both doors were "flexing" or "giving" in pretty badly.

Has anyone else seen or experienced this? I was hoping that maybe it was a 2003/early model issue that has since been revised/updated by design, but I'm not sure. I can't even think of how one would go about fixing this issue as it seems to be more structural than anything.

 

I have two 2004s and on both, the hardware holding the suicide door at the bottom, rattled loose. One of them so far that the plate fell off inside, and I had to get some cutting and welding done. Once these were tightened back up, the doors were solid. Now I just check them once in a while. I think it is probably because of the suicide door configuration, and the added leverage of having two doors anchored to one part, that is held on by just two screws.