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If I were to have had one like that as a kid and misplaced it, the chances are real good it ended up at the bottom of a body of water much like all my guns when I had that unfortunate canoe accident.

Yes I did, he responded right away!

So a buddy i grew up with showed up with this last night. His dad basically gave it to him as he cant drive anymore. 1964 Florida car (about 10-15 years ago he got it from the original owner) 283 2spd auto. Fully loaded with a/c & 7 ash trays i think he said lol....82000m on it now. All original but the tires.

Ah, don't let old Shadetree scare you. He doesn't like the Hondamatics, and I had the same impression of them for a long time, but we have a member who is on here front time to time, @Brian Bertram, who rebuilds them if they aren't totally grenaded. The early Hondamatics got a bad reputation due to faulty oil pumps. I stayed away from them for that reason, but after watching my buddies abuse theirs for 10+ years now without a failure, I've decided they can't be that bad after all. They are very nice to ride with no shifting and seamless power. If you don't have any noise in reverse or neutral, that's a tough diagnosis. The usual troubleshooting on a Rubicon is to do an oil pressure check as they run off of and require high oil pressure. I would be inclined to think it's NOT the Hondamatic if it doesn't make any noise in reverse, but to be safe I'd email Brian and ask him, maybe send a video of the noise to him. He's been very helpful to me when I've reached out to him with Hondamatic questions. His contact info is in this thread. Please let us know what you figure out. I'm rebuilding my first Rubicon/Hondamatic engine now, and at Brian's suggestion, I left the Hondamatic alone (the oil pump chain had jumped off on mine, starving the engine for oil, so new crank and top end going on)

I still assist people with Rubicon and Hondamatic problems. I am located in the St Paul/Minneapolis area. my email address is [email protected]. I also have a listing on eBay for a oil pressure tester. 2001-2003 Honda Rubicon's have the original Hondamatic. 2004-2014 Have the new style Hondamatic (Very few fail) 2001-2004 Have the original failure prone Oil Pumps. (The pressure relief valve sticks open and does not allow for proper oil pressure for the Hondamatic to work properly. This runes the 2001-2003 Original Hondamatic. The 2004's that have the old oil pump and the new Hondamatic seem to survive the low oil pressure problems; I repaired 3 2004 Units last year and was able to just replace the oil pumps. I tool apart the Hondamatic and they were fine. Just last night I took apart a 2001 with a stuck oil pump and the Hondamatic swash plate bearing was failed but the unit still drove. The plastic cage swash plate bearing is not the problem. The 2004-2014 Hondamatic has the exact same bearing. The other failure of the 2001-2003 Hondamatic is one of the pressure relief or check valves in the Hondamatic blow out. I have not developed a fix for this at this time. The metal breaks where the retaining clip hold the valves in.