AirJordan613

My girlfriend just purchased a 2001 civic ex. It has 145,000 miles on it. It was about $3800. The dealer (a honda dealership) replaced the ball joints free of charge (were shot) and is changing the oil. I'm fairly good with my hands. I do almost everything myself on my jeep (repairs, maintenance, etc.) but that is the extent of my knowledge. My point being, I'm open to DIYing on doable projects. I'm just posting to find out what we should plan on doing to the car. I understand that year is the likely one to have a transmission problem of the 7th gen but hers is fine now. Let's hope that if it made it this far, she has one of the good ones. Coming from a jeep forum, I know model-year specific gremlins often get magnified to freak out level even if it's a small percentage affected (albeit prevalent) issue. It's hard to know exactly what the previous owners did to the car. Timing belt is something that I feel should be on the radar. Maybe a trans fluid change, a drain and fill at least. Anything else to look out for? I'm not well versed in honda or civics but I did point her towards a civic because given her budget, I felt a toyota or honda would be the best bet from a reliability standpoint. Thanks in advance.

-Jordan

ezone

Welcome to the forum!

Not only differences between some years of the cars, there are differences between bodies too, coupe and sedan can be quite different in some areas.

Trans drain and fill is good, use Hondas DW1 fluid
Flushing machines and chemicals are strongly discouraged by Honda,
multiple drain and fill is the approved method if you want a flush.

T-belt job 7yr/100,000 whichever comes first
Replace the tensioner pulley during the job, use Honda not aftermarket for this

AirJordan613

Thanks. I saw the write up for trans fluid. Should we be worried about DW1 being synthetic? I always use synthetic products, but I know with their excellent cleaning properties that can also reveal problems that sludge masked. And I'll see if she can have maintenance records. I don't think it would be unreasonable to assume that no prior owner has touched the timing belt, despite it being 14 years old and having 145,000 miles. After looking at the writeup for that, I don't believe I would feel comfortable doing that job.

ezone

You can't go wrong using the correct fluid.

It's the only Honda approved ATF at this time, all previous versions are obsolete (Z-1), and it's completely backwards compatible for all Honda built transmissions that did use Z1


If a trans has problems after using it, it's not because of the correct fluid.

Strycker

iTrader: (1)

We had the local shop,change my wife's '02 Civic LX timing belt at 130k. They did the water pump as well at that time. Having changed my own on my old '98 Tracer, going with a pro is a good idea. So many things in the way to get to the parts. I'm replacing her strut assemblies right now and noticed the ball joints and bushings on her lower control arms are going to need replacing too. Probably to the shop for that too. I can manage the LCAs but not sure I want to mess with with pressing in th ball joints. She's up to 157k and has had the car since new.