Now that I've had this vehicle for approaching 6 months, and now that I've nothing better to do at the moment- I thought I'd post an update.
As some of ya'll may remember, this car has a salvage title. It was hit in the front end, and the front sub-frame has been straightened. So I figured some of ya'll would be interested in how this turned out.
I've addressed several relatively minor issues since buying this vehicle. Most have been minor stuff related to the wreck.
I initially did lots of maintenance, repaired a broken air cleaner bracket, and replaced a transmission mount- all covered in this thread.
A few months later I installed a transmission cooler, covered here:
http://bobistheoilguy.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=2139417
Turns out that those nearly new Riker Raptor tires were absolute junk... not even up to my own low standards. I replaced them with some better tires, here:
http://bobistheoilguy.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=2126383
A couple months back I noticed that there was a little a/c oil leaking where the hot line goes into the a/c condensor. Also the wife had been complaining that the windows were bad about fogging up. Turns out that Jihad had had the a/c line disconnected at some point in his repairs, and cut the o-ring when he reassembled it. When I recovered the refrigerant, only about half of the rated capacity was in there. So I replaced the o-ring and re-charged with some dyed R134-A. No leaks now, and the windows no longer fog up.
Also the wife hit something with it the other day. She swears she doesn't know what happened... but the front bumper cover was all busted up. I checked around for replacements, and an aftermarket cover (which is what this car already had, seeings how it had been wrecked) costs about $120... not bad. But all the body shops around here wanted $250-$300 just to paint the thing. I ended up finding one on ebay- there are vendors who will sell you and aftermarket body panel, painted according to your paint code. Cost $200 painted and shipped. Looks good. Good deal!
Let's see... I didn't like the lack of leg-room up front. Welded up some brackets and moved both front seats back a few inches.
So far we really like how the car drives, and it hasn't had any problems besides the stuff mentioned. My only complaint is vibration- there's a noticeable engine vibration at idle (with the a/c on), and a vibration in the steering wheel at highway speed. From what I've read, though, this is very common with these cars... not something that can be easily fixed. Not a big deal, but a little annoying.
After much research and soul-searching, I've finally decided that I simply CAN'T put DexVI or Transynd into the transmission. Too risky for the price. So I just ordered four quarts of DW-1 off ebay for $8 per quart shipped, which is the cheapest I've been able to find anywhere. I'm not happy about these Honda-only fluids, and I'm not fully convinced that it's necessary. But with some shopping around, they don't cost significantly more than most name-brand fluids... so I'll just bite the bullet and buy the Honda stuff for the most part.
The car is approaching 95,000 now (bought it at 85,000), and I'll probably change the engine oil and ATF next weekend. No oil consumption so far. No funny noises. No unusual shifting. I think this car is gonna last a long time. So far I'm satisfied with my purchase, and I think it's worked out at least as well as the similarly-priced GM vehicles that I tried out would have.