It's a 2003 Civic EX from a private seller. About 101000 miles. Timing belt replaced at 87k miles, exterior is in perfect condition except for one small ding. Engine looked like normal wear, a bit rusted and dirty. Oil was brown and didn't have any grit or particles in it when I felt it. Back two brake pads were worn. When I looked at them, the front two looked shiny and fine, the back two looked rusted. When braking, it wasn't very smooth, could feel the brake pulsating a bit under my foot. After releasing the brake from a stop, I could hear a small squeak, owner said it was from those worned rear brake pads. Was a little louder than normal when starting up engine, but it didn't have any trouble starting up at all.

Clean carfax (no accident or anything reported), two previous owners. I asked the owner a lot of questions, and he seemed honest. I offered 4500 and he accepted. Good deal?

 

i pm'd you if you could give me a carfax plz but you never answered...
sounds like a good deal...

 

Unless something in your head is telling you its a bad deal, I'd do it. Fixing brakes isn't that bad. You should see if a local muffler shop or something would let you rent a lift for 30 minutes. Take the car for a test drive and get a good look at the underside of the car. Check out all the parts.

 

that sounds like a pretty good deal. if the only thing you can wrong with it is some worn rear brake pads then that cars in pretty good shape. 4500 sounds like a great deal if its in as good a shape as you say.

Make sure you check out the front shocks. I have heard from a couple of honda techs that there is a flaw in the design that can sometimes cause the shocks to wear out a little faster than they should. the flaw is that the shock turns with the wheels as opposed to staying stationary like previous models. because of this it can cause the shock to leak and loose its rebounding abilities. but like i said its not all the time, and not guaranteed to happen. its just somethin to look at.

 

Brakes will rust up whenever a car sits around for a while. Check the inner surface of the front rotors too. If you have the "ring of rust" syndrome, stopping ability is seriously diminished. Fortunately, Civic brake parts are not expensive and easy to replace, no need to take the bearings apart like some cars.

 

Actually, I'd say engine wear and tear looks a bit worse than normal. It's more rusted out than my 02 camry w/ 100k miles and my 98 honda oddessey w/ 120k miles. It's got a crack on the engine mount, that is estimated to cost about $175, it needs new brake pads sometime in the near future probably. The brake pulsating actually isn't TOO bad. The car seems fast (and I thought civic was purely an economic car, this 03 civic seemed fast and a bit sporty), a bit faster than my Oddessey or camry. But the normal engine sounds, when accelerating or even at idle, noticably louder than my other two cars. Is a fairly loud engine normal for the Honda Civic 2003 EX 2door?