Our family owns two Honda cars, a 1998 Accord V6 and a 2002 Civic. Both cars require a timing belt replacement at around 105k miles. I had this done on the Accord a few years back for around $800: timing belt, water pump, drive belts, seals. It's about $650 on the Civic. It's important maintenance since the failure of a timing belt means rebuilding part of your engine. It's expensive because of the amount of stuff needed to do to get the job done.

Meredith's car is hovering around 103k miles, so it's time to do it. I decided that this would be my next step in do-it-yourself car maintenance. I found this webpage on how to do it:


It's a long page, so I'll summarize the steps:

1. Remove the battery, jack up the front of the vehicle.
2. Remove right front wheel and the splash guard.
3. Loosen the crank pulley bolt to make sure that you can do it.
4. Drain coolant, replace with distilled water, and drain again.
5. Move the power steering pump out of the way.
6. Remove the alternator, valve cover, engine mount, and timing belt covers.
7. Make sure the engine is at TDC and remove the timing belt.
8. Replace the water pump.
9. Install the timing belt, making sure that the engine is still at TDC.
10. Replace the timing belt covers, engine mount, valve cover, alternator, and power steering pump.
11. Refill coolant and oil.
12. Start engine and make sure that it works.

Today I got all the way to the power steering pump. The alternator is not disconnected, just removed. The connections are a pain, and I don't know how I will get them off yet. The highlight of the day was definitely getting the crank pulley bolt loosened. I had spent $100 on the tools necessary for just this part:

• Crank pulley holder tool
• Breaker bar
• Extensions for breaker bar
• Sockets for breaker bar

The only tool I may not need again is the crank pulley holder tool. I'm sure I'll use the rest of the tools again. Anyway, I planned on doing like the Timing Belt DIY said and used the breaker bar with the extension and sockets, supported by a jack stand for leverage. You can see it in this video. First I tried just the breaker bar, which I couldn't get enough force on. Then I tried my neighbor's impact wrench, which didn't get it either. Then I tried using a cheater bar to augment my breaker bar -- a 6 foot long piece of square metal. The bolt made a snapping sound as it broke loose. I was extremely nervous that I had stripped or broken the bolt, but it was intact. So I knew that I could proceed without the assistance of a mechanic.

Total time today: around 5 hours.

-Brent