Long story short, I’ve never bought a car from a 3rd party seller, and think I made a huge mistake. I bought a 1999 Honda Accord EX with 180k miles today for a reasonable price. Checked the car out. Everything looked good and checked out. Ran the car fax on it and it’s been maintained its whole life. Also took it for a test drive. Later on, I was on the freeway driving home and got an engine light. Scanned it with my OBD2 tool and I’m seeing this code is a p0740. It came off a while later and came back on. Did some research and it’s looking like this means I basically need to replace the tranny.

I feel like I totally screwed by this guy that sold me the car. I’m devastated. I can’t afford to fix a freakin transmission. Should I confront him? Or lesson learned?

 

I am not an expert or a lawyer but it doesn't sound good. Unless you had a contract that included some kind of warranty, unfortunately I think you're screwed. To my knowledge “Lemon laws” do not apply to used cars sold privately. You should have had a mechanic look at it first, auto sales are as-is. You likely do not have a case. You might want to have a reliable mechanic check it out before spending a whole lot of additional money to fix it.

 

The TC lockup solenoid needs attention.
Does it run well?