NewSaint

Author’s Note: This is a short rant written in 2022 in response to an argument I had about the best method for keeping records of time. I have lightly adapted it for this format and made minor changes where appropriate.

For those in the US, you’re probably used to the MDY (Month, Day, Year) date format, along with using a 12-hour clock. This system is bad and is rife with confusion. Most other systems are even worse (I’m lookin’ at you DMY).

If we’re gonna make it to the glorious techno-future then we’re gonna need to get on the same track about dates and times… but if we’re destined for nuclear hellfire / apocalypse, then I guess this rant won’t matter.

Anyway, the only useful and correct date / time format is Year > Month > Day > Hour > Minute > Second. Big to small. Old to new.

In a computer system—or even a paper-based system—this format will sort files in perfect chronological order. Let’s take a look at an example.

You have three files that need to be sorted and three methods to do so:

1st file is from Dec. 31, 1999
2nd file is from Mar. 4, 2013
3rd file is from Aug. 11, 2019

Method 01: Day First (DMY)

This system has the files in order by the day of their respective month. The day in which something occur is almost always less important than the chronology of its occurrence in relation to other events. This system is bad.

04-03-2013.txt
11-08-2019.txt
31-12-1999.txt

Method 02: Month First (MDY)

This system has the same issue as the previous method. The month in which something occurs is helpful, but the October of one year is very different than the October twenty years hence. This system is bad.

03-04-2013.txt
08-11-2019.txt
12-31-1999.txt

Method 03: Year First (YMD)

This system solves the chronology issues of the above two methods. Dates are grouped with those that are closest together in time and go from the past, to the present, to the future.

1999-12-31.txt
2013-03-04.txt
2019-08-11.txt

2024 Update: I was well aware of the International Organization for Standardization by this point, but didn’t bother to look into their suggestions for time keeping. Turns out ISO 8601 covers the above completely and should be adopted worldwide immediately. If you’re curious, another resource you can reference is Wikipedia’s list of date formats by country.

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2022-07-14 - original article written
2024-07-25 - adapted and revised

The last few days have been full of excitement and frustration. My new car is nice, but has some minor underlying issues that I wanted to take care of before I put too many miles on it.

01: Air Filters
There are two slab-style filters in the cabin and a cylindrical one in the engine bay. The engine filter was swapped without much trouble; just four screws and moving some hoses is all it took. The cabin filters were much more involved; first you have to drop the glovebox, then you have to remove a little plastic door, then you pull out both filters. This last part was the most troublesome as the filters seemed anchored in place. I gave them the ‘ol heave-ho and they popped right out… alongside some rodent crap and goddamn CHICKEN BONES. A lot of them!

I tossed the larger pieces, vacuumed out the spilled mess in my passenger seat area (as well as what I could get to under where the filters go), popped the new filters in, and reassembled. I then promptly started the AC, sprayed one of those Ozium car bomber things, and let it cook for a while. This helped the smell a great deal, but it kind of came back a few days later, much better than before though. I’ll clean the engine bay and air intake more soon.

02: The driver’s seat
Mine—like almost all Elements—has a front-to-back tear on the driver’s seat, on the side closest to the door. I purchased a leather repair kit on Amazon for about $6 and cut it to fit the seat, applied it with a hairdryer, and it seems to be holding up well enough. I have another sheet if I need to make a replacement patch in a few months.

03: Speakers
The OEM speakers in a lot of the Elements I’ve seen have been blown or are just disintegrating. I suppose those materials just weren’t designed to last 20+ years. I replaced the four door speakers with Harman Infinity Reference 6532ex’s, about $140 total as I got them refurbished with a $10 speaker adapter cable set. The sound is much better and they seem to pair well with the existing subwoofer and tweeters.

04: Spark Plugs
The existing plugs were probably original and while they showed some discoloration, the ceramic wasn’t cracking and the electrodes weren’t too badly corroded, so I suppose they held up well. I replaced them with a set of NGK Laser Iridium 6994 plugs, cleaned and greased the existing coils, torqued it all to spec, and the engine fired up without issue.

05: Oil Change
When buying a used car, fluids are tricky as it can be difficult to know when if they were changed and if they were done properly (they weren’t). I already had a new jug of 5W-20 High Mileage oil that I planned to put into my current car, but I have a few miles left until that time comes, so I elected to use it for the Element. That was the easy part, it turns out, the last guy to put an oil filter on the engine was invigorated by Hercules himself and it was completely stuck in place. This was quite the issue for me and turned a thirty minute oil change into a four-hour long living nightmare with multiple trips to the hardware store and to a garage on a nearby property.

Turns out, a major design oversight with the Element is the placement of the oil filter. It is situated in a hard to reach space and even with small hands, I wasn’t able to comfortably reach it, much less get any sort of grip onto its slick surface. I tried three different oil wrenches; an adjustable clampy kind, an adjustable rubber grippy kind, and a 64mm oil filter wrench specifically designed for OEM filters. None of these provided any amount of traction and I was unable to loosen it at all with them. I resorted to finding a hose clamp, wrenching it onto the cheapo filter with similar vigor, and tapping it with a screwdriver / hammer combo until it finally gave way and unscrewed. I replaced it with an OEM filter marked with the date and mileage, filled the oil up, drove it for a minute or so, topped it up to get it to full, and called it an afternoon.

06: Headlight Housing
But the afternoon wasn’t called quite yet as my new headlight housings came in and I already had the car up on Rhino Ramps so I may as well take the opportunity to yank off the bumper cover, vacuum out some more chicken bones, and pop in the new headlight lenses. The old ones were kind of yellow and while they were in usable shape, I like a crystal clear headlight and the replacements I ordered were a black-accented set for about $120. The install was quick and easy, I even replaced some of the cracked / missing clips from the bumper cover.

07. Radio
One of my excursions to the local car scrapyard netted me a car radio from a 2008 Element. It was a tad rusty and needed some TLC, but I took a gamble and spent about $40 on it. I took it home, completely disassembled it, cleaned the hell out of it, snapped it back together, and… that was it for a few weeks. I bought the radio before I had an Element to test it in so all I could do was guess as to whether it was working or not. Another issue I didn’t anticipate was the anti-theft system Honda put on their radios. You need a 5-digit code to “unlock” the radio whenever power is removed from it. I took a photo of the car as well as the VIN when I took the radio from the parts yard and I’m glad I did as it was just what I needed to get the code from Honda. I also grabbed the surrounding snap-on plastic trim as I wasn’t sure if I would need it, turns out I did need it as the 2003 radio’s shroud didn’t fit on the 2008 radio.

To test the radio, I actually assembled this weird little box that consists of a Honda radio harness connected to a computer power supply with the radio on top and held together with metal strips and zip ties. While janky looking, this machine allows me to power on and test Element radios safely. I plan to connect a pair of car speakers to it in the future and create a de facto shop radio with a CD player. This contraption help the ‘08 radio for a few weeks, but I eventually swapped it into my Element and put its ‘03 radio into the shop radio box. The speakers come in a few days, I’ll give you an update when it’s all done.

08: Hatch Struts
On a lot of Elements, the rear hatch supports seem to fail after a number of years. Mine still held the hatch up, but had trouble raising it without manual assistance. Per a forum comment, I opted to replace mine with a pair of VW Beetle struts from Amazon. $20 and 3 minutes of install later and my hatch opens up quickly and a few inches taller than it used to. The struts I got were these ECCPP 4325 Rear Hatchback Lift Supports

09: LED Lights
As far as I know, there are only nineteen light bulbs on an Element, not including the dash and HVAC system; Two high / low beam headlights, four turn signals, three brake lights, two reverse lights, two side markers, two license plate lights, two map lights, and two dome lights. I have replaced all of these with LEDs of appropriate colors and they are brilliantly bright now. The only lights that are still incandescent are the headlights, I have an LED set coming in a day or so, but I don’t usually like them and I’m not sure if I’ll keep them yet. While replacing the lights, I cleaned up the various mounts, housings, and lenses to make them look a little less dirty.

10: Battery
The standard battery in an E is a Group 51R battery and in my case, it was listed as having 500 CCA. This battery is widely regarded as undersized, so I elected to replace it with a larger, group 24F battery. The cheap Walmart one I grabbed ($70 + $12 core charge) states to have 600 CCA. To accomplish this install, I bent the existing battery tray tie down tabs flat, bolted on a universal battery tray ($10) on top, and dropped in the new battery. A $10 tie down kit solidified the upgrade and made it a clean install. I cut the J bolts for the new tie downs about 20mm shorter and used some threadlocker on the battery tray bolt to help with vibration. I was even able to reuse the little zip-tied cable loom clip that connects to the J bolt to keep those cables from rubbing on the bare metal.

11: Tires
While the back two tires on my E are Michelin, the date code puts their manufacture date in Q4 of 2013, far too old for safe use, not to mention the dry rot creeping around the tread. The front tires aren’t much better. While they are only two years old, they’re a no-name brand and should be part of a matching set. I opted to get a new set of Crosswind All Season Light Truck tires from Walmart. I’ve never cared much for fancy tires and I’m pretty cheap, so I think these’ll be fine for a while. My first stop after the tires is to get an alignment though as it’s such an important step that a lot of people seem to gloss over after getting new tires is to get their car properly aligned.

Note: I completely forgot to finish this article before posting it. I rounded off the last paragraph so it should be good now. Part 4 is coming later today (probably). Bur for now, please enjoy the Elements that I’ve spotted recently:

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2024-07-23 - original article written
2024-08-08 - article finished

Tuesday, July 16th of 2024 was the day that I finally bought my 2nd car. I was fortunate to find a 2003 Honda Element in Sunset Orange Pearl with a mere 129K (rust free) miles on it just a few hours’ drive away. I called off work, drove up there, and spent the afternoon haggling with an Arabic kid, trying to talk him and his dad off of the $8K that they wanted for the E.

Before I expressed any specific interest, I made sure to (literally) crawl over every inch of it and take in the total condition. I tested the windows (more on that later), the locks, looked for rust, checked panel gaps, respray, chips, scratches, tires, etc. I even scurried under the damn thing to check the mission-critical undercarriage.

The main sales associate tossed me the keys and basically said “have fun”. I took it for a twenty minute test drive on the nearby street, highway, and I even tested the braking power in an abandoned parking lot. I came back, pointed out the mismatched tires, small amount of wear ‘n tear, and the rusty bumper but they wouldn’t budge far off of their sticker price.

Unfortunately, I’m not much of a haggler so I was only able to knock off the paperwork fee; a $600 (in my case), bullshit charge for selling me a car and filling out half-a-dozen pages of simple paperwork. I paid cash, signed some documents, and was on my way.

The drive home was helpful as it gave me a much longer-term idea of the drivability of the Element—my Element—as well as some of the issues I noticed.

01: Windows
The passenger window seems to only work intermittently. It worked fine when I tested it not two hours earlier, but it seemed to have died in the interim.

02: Noise
There’s some high-pitched squeaky sound that revealed itself at around 72mph and wasn’t noticeable at significantly higher or lower speeds.

03: Drivability
The overall suspension and alignment need attention. I plan to address those before I put too many more miles on it.

I got it home, spent a while buffing out the goddamn Armor All, and eventually got it to a slightly less oily condition. The interior, seats, body, and trim are in remarkably good condition though. I plan to rust-proof it, rub some conditioner into the plastic trim, and coat the paint with a simple rub-on, wipe-off wax.

At the request of my coworkers, I drove it to my office the next day and they all took a look at it out in the parking lot before the day started. I showed off some of the obvious features including the folding seats, suicide doors, and hatch / tailgate.

I really only plan to drive it as a secondary vehicle; at least until I can replace the fluids, change the tires, and get the whole thing aligned.

This weekend, I plan to change the oil, swap all he lights with LEDs (except the headlights, those stay halogen [Note: I’m testing LED headlights this week]), swap the air filters (cabin and engine), de-stinkify it (smells like undesirables), and replace the hatch struts as they aren’t very weak, but they don’t lift up much on their own. I’ll take some pictures and include in the next entry, but for now, please enjoy the Element pictures I’ve captured on the last few days:

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2024-07-19 - original article written
2024-07-25 - revised and updated

Somewhere around 2018, a longtime friend of mine recommended that I ditch my 19-year-old, spray painted, dented up, rust bucket for a Honda Element. I basically ignored his advice for a few years as my cheap ass is way too stingy to buy a half-decent car for what those crook car dealers want and my current car works fine (most of the time). Cut to a few months ago, I’m leaving a Walmart parking lot and I see a 1st gen Element (2003-2006) sitting a few spots away from me with a For Sale sign in the window.

I walked around it for a minute, took some pictures of the sign and number, then realized there were people in the front seat (whoops). The guy was nice and showed me around the vehicle for a minute, started it up, and let me know the mileage (220,000 mi) and the price ($3,000 iirc). I thanked him and thought about it for a few days. I decided I should go for it and texted the number. Unfortunately, the car was sold the day before. Bummer.

A few more months go by and I don’t pay the Element market much mind. I happened to drive past a used car lot and out in front there sat an Element being used as a billboard to advertise some local mechanic. I jotted down the number and gave it a call later that day. The man said that the sign isn’t available for sale, but he did have a 2003 black Element for sale, 240K miles, and priced to move. He sent me some photos of it and then stopped responding to my texts. Another bummer, perhaps it sold.

Couple days later, I see a black Element parked next to a few cars on the side of a road that I pass going to work. There was no For Sale sign or contact info. so I had to do a bit of detective work. I found the house on Google Maps, found a business that was right behind it and cold called them. A man answered, I asked about the Element and he gave me the number of the man who owns it. It matched the number of the Element from the billboard! I found the car and it hasn’t been sold yet. I called the number and spoke with the owner again, let him know that I drive by the car daily, and that I’d like to see it if possible. We set a date and time, I showed up, and he gave me the grand tour.

The car was dirty, not well maintained, had some really sketchy lower kit on it (basically some U-bolts on the shocks), cheap tint, broken or missing panels, and some other cosmetic issues. I gave it a quick test drive, turned down his $2,700 cash-in-hand offer, and went home. Bummer #2.5.

In May, I won an ebay auction for a 2005 Honda Element EX with 104K miles on it in Satin Silver Metallic with a Surf Blue accented interior. No mechanical issues (more on this later), a cheap shipping quote, and a moderately high ebay seller rating made me confident that the car would be fine if not great.

A week after I sent my bank wire and signed all the paperwork, I message the seller to see when I’ll get my car. She (Annie) says that they’ve put the job up on the shipping site and that it’ll go out next week.

A week later, she says that the Element has developed a transmission issue and her mechanic is looking into it.

A week later, she says that they’ll put a replacement transmission in it free-of-charge and they’re waiting on parts

A week later, she says that the replacement transmission failed and it’s still having trouble shifting.

A total of 35 days after I paid for my car, they call me and say that they’re going to refund me the full amount and keep the car.

This seller (jetafel on ebay) is incredibly shady and was terrible about communicating the status of the car that I already paid for ($7,000 after shipping and “processing fees”). I waited for my refund check to clear and once it did, I wrote up my ordeal in a jaded (but certainly true) ebay review. This was immediately appealed and removed by them, but at least it helped tank their seller rating. Bummer #3.

While I was certainly disappointed, I was not defeated. I began crawling all of the used car sites (AutoTempest is a great tool for that) in search of another Element. I traveled about two hours south of my home to see an Element I found on Craigslist with around 150K miles on it. I found the car, shook hands with the guy selling it, and began examining the car with a fine-tooth-comb. I peered in every little nook and cranny; I fired it up and took it for a spin; and I crawled underneath the damn thing while it was parked on the street. The results weren’t good; there was lots of rust, interior was shredded by dogs, and the owner clearly had no idea about the finer details concerning its condition. I turned down his $6,200 offer and drove home. Bummer #4.

With quite a few bummers on my mind, I wearily returned to the used car websites and began the search yet again. I even briefly turned to looking for a 2nd gen CR-V as they seemed to be a little more available, but I found out they are just as rare and desirable (I just want the little card table and the spare on the back door). Everyone wants upwards of $8K for a ~20 year old car that is reliable sure, but ugly as sin and not very powerful. I suppose there are more people out there like me than I suspected.

One of the Elements I saw a few times happened to be for sale just a few minutes from my work and the dealership had reasonable hours. I sent an inquiry and was met with some pushback as they insisted that their 2005 E with 128K miles on it was absolutely worth the $10K that they were asking for it. I scheduled to see it anyway and I went there after work yesterday to check it out.

This dinky little dealer was getting to be more lipstick than pig, but I gave them a chance, gave them my ID, and they pulled the Sunset Orange Pearl beauty around for me to test drive. The car was like the dealer—a polished turd. Sure it had pretty low mileage for an E of this antiquity, but the amount of paint respray, loose body panels, and weird devices wired into the engine bay made me sure it wasn’t worth my time, let alone $10K. I puttered around in it for about ten minutes, but due to traffic conditions, I wasn’t able to take it over 50 mph. I returned to the dealer, handed them the keys, and left without even discussing a purchase.

There’s another orange E about two hours north of me that I plan to check out this weekend. But in the meantime, I thought it would be fun for me to collect the Element pictures I’ve taken in the last few months and arrange them below, enjoy!

Bonus Story: I also briefly considered buying this rusted-out 1998 Dodge Neon for $250 as a favor to the owner and a project for myself. After finding out the totality of the damage though—it was sitting for about five years and the transmission was completely seized—I decided to turn it down. I did however see it at the junkyard a few weeks later, which was interesting.

If there is anyone that has an Element that they’d like to sell, I’m a serious buyer and I have cash in hand. Please send me a message and I’d love to chat.

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2024-07-09 - original article written
2024-07-24 - revised