Thank you for the replies, greatly appreciated.

As for the flashing D4 light, next time I talk to my sister, I'll ask her to go out and turn on the ignition to see if it's in fact flashing (the owner made no mention of it. When I asked him if there were any lights on the dash, he just said that the check engine light was on and had been since around the same time the car turned over 200k.) I have asked her to start the engine and let it run for at least 30-40 minutes every 2-3 days (or at least once a week) to keep it from just sitting (and keep the battery charged) think this is a good idea? If I get the car fixed up there, it will be likely be about another month or so. The car has already sat since the beginning of December.

The exact, I mean exact same thing happen to me.>>>

About how many miles were on the car when it happened? 205k is a lot of miles, but still seems a bit premature for a tranny failure, especially one that was so well maintained and driven. Honda ATF changed every 30k miles religiously, mostly all highway miles and I can literally count the times on one hand that I ever even took the car above 4,000 rpms. I don't know if 4th gens had the same unit, but I know of several that have gone 300k+ on the same transmission.

The guy did admit that he was a hard on the car (heavy foot) and he obviously got into some accidents with it (it didn't look like that when I had it!) It was obvious by the black fenders, ripped out door handles, etc. that he was rough with it... and I witnessed how he drives the new Sentra. But, he did keep up with the Mobil1 synthetic oil changes and he's 'only' put 35k miles on it.