Hi all,

Lots of good info here, hopefully I can get a little of my own.

My GF has an '03 LX with the 1.7L I4. She bought it from her mom who bought it new. Just rolled over to 72k mi and today started having issues. She doesn't think any major maintenance has ever been done on it. We just replaced the tires, I have new brake pads & rotors on order (last oil change the shop noted 2mm pads left...).

Today it started losing power at low rpms. You'd hit the gas and nothing was there for a while, then it would jerk and go. I brought it home, and by the time i got out a scanner it stalled in the garage. I swapped out the spark plugs and upstream O2 sensor, and pulled the IACV for a thorough cleaning. Now it seems to be good.

So to the point: I'm going to be doing the brakes this weekend or next week. At the same time I was considering doing a brake system drain & fill, and a transmission drain & fill. But a lot of places I've read says that if it's never been done, better not do it cause you'll just cause failures. What says the collected knowledge of CivicForums?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

i would leave the brake fluid, but change the tranny fluid, its simple, just drain and fill, use honda oem fluid, DO NOT OVERFILL!!

Brake fluid is called for every 3 years.... and btw your timing belt is now 10 years old.

yeah the timing belt should be fist on your list unless you have the money to replace the entire engine when it snaps.

timing belt - usually recommended 100k. mine looked OK at 10 years, but depend on where you live as well. heat/ozone could make rubber brittle and it cracks. remove top cover and check if belts are cracked. if not, throw the coin and decide to try the luck for 100k or not and hope it will last to 100k. you might get luck.

if loosing coolant from the reservoir, do head gasket and timing belt - similar jobs.

recommend reading through this also.
https://www.civicforums.com/forums/1...e-up-mods.html

Generally I would say that changing the transmission fluid in a car is about as likely to cause transmission failure as changing the wipers are to causing windshield failure. There are certain people who, when they notice a problem in the transmission try to fix it with fluid and filter. I just changed the transmission fluid in my 2001 civic dx MT for most likely the first time in 300,000km, it worked perfectly before and after the fluid change. As for the brake fluid, if you use synthetic DOT4 I wouldnt worry about completely draining your system just make sure you do a small bleed each time you do your pads/rotors and it should be good for years to come.

Not sure what I've had done with an 01 Civic AUTO with 300k on original fluid... maybe a single drain and fill and cross fingers.

I had windshield failure from changing refills... when my passenger side wiper arm slammed down on the glass.

Honda brake fluid is DOT3. iirc.

DOT 4 brake fluid should be flushed the same as DOT 3. Both are glycol based and absorb moisture. The only brake fluid that does not absorb moisture is silicone based DOT 5 and it is rarely used because of other issues.
The labeling of brake fluid as synthetic is kind of misleading since most is glycol based and there is no standard for "synthetic" or "non-systhetic". It seems more an advertising gimic since people associate synthetic with better.