I am in need of some advice. Here’s a little background info: I have a ’97 Civic LX that I bought in August. It had 150k when I bought it, and now has 162k. I have kept up with it pretty well, and done a good bit of repairs to it, such as the tie rods, tires, rear brakes, trailing arm bushings, front motor mount, front torque mount, oil pan gasket, etc. It’s running pretty well at the moment.

The previous owner was a foreign exchange student that only needed the car for the summer, and then sold it to me before he went back to Estonia. He said that the owner that he bought it from had experienced overheating. The previous owner told him that he had recently had a head job, replaced the radiator, and I’m not sure what else but I’m assuming the water pump / timing belt.

When I bought the car, I also bought a timing belt / water pump / tensioner / cam and crank seal kit off of eBay, which I planned to install immediately.

When I was taking off the driver’s side motor mount to do the repair, I found that the two bolts holding the mount bracket into the block (the ones covered by the timing belt cover) had problems: one bolt was stripped, and the other was broken inside the bolt hole. I managed to extract the broken one, and the plan was to HeliCoil the stripped one. When I was drilling the hole for the HeliCoil insert, I accidently drilled too far, hit a water jacket, and had coolant spill out of the bolt hole. To fix it, I continued installing the HeliCoil insert, and put the bolt in with a good amount of RTV sealant on the end of it. After this “close call”, I decided not to even mess with the timing belt / water pump (mainly because it looked pretty new and I didn’t want to invite any more unexpected problems). I put everything back together, without having done the timing belt or any of the other repairs.

Since then I have kept a very close eye on all fluid levels. The car has never overheated, and it loses a minimal amount of oil. When I was in the timing belt area, I did notice some gunk build-up underneath the crankshaft seal. I want to know if I should try to go back in there and replace the timing belt / water pump / tensioner / crank seal, or if I should just leave it alone until the car has a few more miles on it.. I was guesstimating that it would need to be done around 180-200k to be on the safe side.

Also, in first gear and reverse, the car sometimes “shudders” when I am starting off. My mechanic friend said it could be a sign that the flywheel needs resurfacing. The clutch itself does not slip at all, and it engages / disengages without any problems (other than the occasional shudder in 1st and reverse). I was also considering replacing the clutch / having the flywheel resurfaced.

Normally, I would not worry about these issues until something actually occurred (with the exception of the timing belt, of course), but I am planning on going on a cross-country road trip after the third week of April. I have been driving this car every day since I got it, and it has been nothing but reliable and dependable. I am just starting to worry about the smallest things, especially because I will be putting 5,000+ miles on the car in about a month or so, but most importantly, I will be far away from the “comforts” of my garage – nice jack / jack stands / proper area to work on the vehicle for a couple of days. What would you guys do? Sorry for the long, drawn out post.