Originally Posted by SLO_Town
Hello:
A friend of mine has always liked my Honda Element so he decided to buy one himself. He lives in Arizona and found a nice one owner vehicle at a high volume used car dealer. After buying he drove it to my home in California. We did a complete maintenance on it; engine oil and filter, transmission oil and filter, power steering fluid, brake bleed, coolant change, engine air filter, cabin filter, serpentine belt - and a valve adjustment.
Although his "new" Element seemed very nice, you really never know when you buy a 10 year old car. There were no maintenance records for it. But, besides it looking well cared for, it had all the original owners, warranty, emissions manuals in the original pouch, including the code for the radio should the battery be disconnected (you need the code to make the radio work after the battery disconnect). IMO having all this original stuff is a very good sign that it was loved by its original owner, but still you never really know.
We pulled the cam cover to adjust the valves and it suggests the vehicle was indeed loved and well cared for by the original owner. We only took one engine picture in our mission to do all this work, but it says a lot.
Long live Honda's K24 engine! What a masterpiece of a small displacement engine engineering!
Scott
PS My good friend, both he and I are 67 years old - and we met in 1959 in first grade. We've been close friends ever since. How cool is that?
Very clean / nice looking engine !