A friend of mine bought this car on the cheap with 145,000 miles on it. It had about 5 prior owners with ZERO service history. Ughh!!!!

While looking under the hood, I noticed that the auto trans oil cooler under the radiator is completely disconnected with no hoses at all leading into them. Hmmm. I also noticed no oil lines at all coming out of the trans, and a heat exchanger on top of the trans. which seems to have coolant going through it.

I was wondering if at sometime in the past the Honda radiator trans oil cooler may have been replaced by this heat exchanger, and thus that this entire trans unit (and maybe the engine too), may have been replaced by a newer unit on this car since 2004. With no oil lines coming out of the trans, did Honda at one point replace the internal radiator trans cooler with this heat exchanger unit instead?

If so, that would explain why his trans is fine at 145,000 miles, when all others from that year failed miserably before 80,000 miles.

Thanks