Timing Belt Change; Level of Difficulty for the newbie, but desired!

[legend1011]

Hello,

This is my first post in this forum. I currently own a 98 Honda Passport, but as of this Saturday, I will have an 1989 Honda Civic Sedan (Not sure if DX or LX). The seller, who happens to be one of my good friends, is not sure if the timing belt has been done or not; He thinks it is, but is not 100% sure; he told me he will check his records. Anyways, the car has 168,000 miles on it. What does this job intail? I am willing to give up a Saturday to do this if neccessary and, to be honest, would be more than willing to tackle this so time isn't a factor for me. Including the timing belt, I would like to do the timing belt as well.

What would you guys suggest? and how hard is it to do? Is there a walkthrough somewhere or downloadable service manual for this? Thanks in advance

[legend1011]

I downloaded a service manual for the 88-90 civic at www.hondahookup.com

the link to the manual is http://www.hondahookup.com/manuals/

It is listed as "Honda Civic (1988-90) Service Manual"

You have the scroll through and look for it; it is toward the end of the page from what I remember.

Anyways, could someone download it and review the timing belt section in there? It does not look that hard? Seems pretty straight forward actually (for this vehicle anyway) and looks like something even a novice could do provided they know how to read and follow instructions.

Let me know what you guys think. I would love to tackle a project like this (the savings would be tremendous)

[turtlecrxsi]

Here is a link to a pdf version of the Helms shop manual for 88-91 civc/crx (the best).

http://www.crxpower.net/~silverkorn/...hop_Manual.pdf

GL

[Tony]

It really isn't a difficult task to change the timing belt. The hardest part is breaking the harmonic balancer loose. you can do a search on it, which is also referred to as just the Crank Pulley, but there are several different ways to break the bolt loose. Once you get that over with, the rest is pretty simple, any of the manuals should walk you straight through it.