AtWhatMileage
Body · 36 owner reports

Other body or interior problem on the 2004 Honda Accord

2 crashes 1 fire 8 injuries 11 of the 36 reports for this failure mention a crash, a fire, an injury or a death. Those are the owner's words on the complaint form, not a verified finding, and one report can mention more than one.

Reports of this failure 36
With an odometer reading 25
Reports per 1,000 built 0.3 per 1,000
Filed below 36,000 miles 40%
Mention a crash, fire or injury 11
Typical repair $200–$2,000
What it means when it happens Moderate
Rank among this year's problems 7th

When other body or interior problem gets reported

Owners of the 2004 Honda Accord report other body or interior problem at a median of 70,000 miles. A quarter of the reports come in before 10,000 miles and a quarter after 115,000 miles, from 25 reports that carried an odometer reading.

A part like this is normally expected to survive 88,000 miles. It is the 7th most-reported problem on this model year.

The mileage distribution

The reported range runs from 100 miles at the tenth percentile to 135,000 miles at the ninetieth, a spread of 134,750 miles across the middle 80% of reports.

When the reports scatter this far, the mileage is telling you about how these cars were driven more than about the part itself.

40% of the dated reports were filed under 36,000 miles.

The whole distribution

Percentiles of the 25 odometer readings owners gave.
10th25thMedian 75th90th
50 miles 9,000 miles 69,300 miles 115,000 miles 134,800 miles

Read the 10th percentile as “one report in ten arrived this early”. Exact figures are shown in this table because it is the table of record; everywhere else on the site they are rounded to the precision the sample can carry.

What a percentile can and cannot tell you here

These five numbers describe the readings owners gave, in order. The median is the middle one: half the reports arrived below it. The 10th and 90th are the edges of the bulk of the distribution, and the distance between them is the part worth reading. A tight spread — say 70,000 to 95,000 miles — points at something that wears out on a schedule, and the schedule is knowable. A wide one, 20,000 to 190,000, points at a fault that hits some cars and never troubles others, which means the mileage on the listing in front of you tells you very little about your odds.

What these figures are not is a survival curve. Every reading here comes from a car whose owner filed a complaint, so the sample contains only failures: it cannot say what share of the fleet made it past 150,000 miles untouched, because those owners had nothing to report. Nor is the mileage the moment of failure — it is the odometer reading as recalled at the time of filing, which may be weeks later and is sometimes rounded to the nearest ten thousand by the person typing it.

Percentiles are shown at all only once 8 readings exist for the vehicle and mode. Below that the middle of a handful of numbers is noise wearing a decimal point, so the figures are withheld rather than dressed up.

What happens, and what it costs

Of these reports, 2 a crash, 1 a fire and 8 an injury are mentioned. Owners write their own complaints and the agency does not verify them, so read this as what the reports say happened rather than as a confirmed count.

Putting it right typically runs $200–$2,000 at an independent US shop. That range is an editorial estimate held in this site's failure-mode catalogue, not a figure from NHTSA, and it is a repair cost rather than a diagnosis cost.

The same failure on other years

The same failure is reported on 29 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2012, at a median of 1,000 miles, and latest on the 1997 at 175,000 miles.

By volume the 2003 carries the most reports, with 102; the 2004 has 36. A mode that appears across most years of a model is usually a design choice rather than a bad batch.

If one year stands out to the left, that is the year to avoid; if the whole line sits at a similar mileage, this is wear rather than a defect in one production run.

Median
  1. 1996 Honda Accord other body or interior problem 125k
  2. 1997 Honda Accord other body or interior problem 174k
  3. 1998 Honda Accord other body or interior problem 107k
  4. 1999 Honda Accord other body or interior problem 115k
  5. 2000 Honda Accord other body or interior problem 108k
  6. 2001 Honda Accord other body or interior problem 85k
  7. 2002 Honda Accord other body or interior problem 85k
  8. 2003 Honda Accord other body or interior problem 49k
  9. 2004 (this one) 69k
  10. 2005 Honda Accord other body or interior problem 77k
  11. 2006 Honda Accord other body or interior problem 110k
  12. 2007 Honda Accord other body or interior problem 60k
  13. 2008 Honda Accord other body or interior problem 43k
  14. 2009 Honda Accord other body or interior problem 34k
  15. 2010 Honda Accord other body or interior problem 38k
  16. 2011 Honda Accord other body or interior problem 16k
  17. 2012 Honda Accord other body or interior problem 1k
  18. 2013 Honda Accord other body or interior problem 3k
  19. 2014 Honda Accord other body or interior problem 2k
  20. 2015 Honda Accord other body or interior problem 6k
  21. 2016 Honda Accord other body or interior problem 9k
  22. 2017 Honda Accord other body or interior problem 7k
  23. 2018 Honda Accord other body or interior problem 27k
  24. 2019 Honda Accord other body or interior problem 6k
  25. 2020 Honda Accord other body or interior problem 3k
  26. 2021 Honda Accord other body or interior problem 71k
  27. 2022 Honda Accord other body or interior problem 38k
  28. 2023 Honda Accord other body or interior problem
    no odometer readings given
    —
  29. 2024 Honda Accord other body or interior problem 2k
  30. 2025 Honda Accord other body or interior problem 57k

Tick median reported mileage Solid middle half of reports Faint 10th to 90th percentile Colour how bad the failure is when it happens

What owners wrote

Verbatim from NHTSA complaint narratives, trimmed for length. The mileage is the one the owner gave.

I have had several instances in the past few month's where the seat has moved forward on it's own. This was caused from hard braking. Amount of movement was from a 1/4 to 1 inch. This is very much a serious safety issue. Honda is going to repair the tracks, but I felt a need to report this issue. *nm

9,000 miles NHTSA complaint 523512 filed 2005-02-25

Dt: 2004 honda accord, all the doors remained open at 2 positions. When not in those positions they would shut. When the door was opened on the driver's side it shut and the consumers hand was caught in the door. The consumer feels the door should not have shut. *jb the consumer feel that this incident is because of a design flaw. *sb

11,000 miles NHTSA complaint 535435 filed 2005-05-17

On 5 december 2005 after driving about 5 minutes there was a loud pop then the passenger seat heater came on by it self causing the seat to getting very hot. The seat heater was turn on then off. This action cause the heater to go off. *nm

18,300 miles NHTSA complaint 566391 filed 2005-12-19

Also reported on the 2004 Honda Accord

Other powertrain problem

199 reports median 105k

Complete transmission failure

111 reports median 99k

Other electrical problem

104 reports median 85k

Seat belt or retractor failure

45 reports median 60k

Other steering problem

38 reports median 140k

How far this goes

Complaints are voluntary, so 36 is a floor and not a count of affected cars. Mileages are typed in by owners and cluster on round numbers. And the mode itself is assigned by software reading the complaint text, which is reliable in bulk and fallible one report at a time.

Questions this page answers

At what mileage does other body or interior problem happen on the 2004 Honda Accord?

Across 25 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 70,000 miles. A quarter were filed before 10,000 miles and a quarter after 115,000 miles. These are the mileages owners reported when they complained, not a prediction for any individual car.

How common is other body or interior problem on the 2004 Honda Accord?

36 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 0.3 per 1,000 vehicles. Complaints are voluntary, so this is a floor rather than a count of affected cars.

What this is and is not. These are the mileages at which owners chose to complain to a federal agency, which is not the same as the mileage at which the part fails on every car. It skews toward failures that happened outside warranty, cost real money, or frightened someone. It is still the only public dataset that carries failure mileage at all, and the shape of a few hundred readings is informative even when a single one is not. Methodology · JSON · this failure on other cars

Source Owner complaints and recall records published by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, model years 1996–2027 Figures rebuilt Published by AtWhatMileage How every figure is computed