i have always drove trucks and now need a reliable car for my job due to the fuel prices. im looking at a 97 honda civic ex 2 door. it has a 5spd 4cyl. the car has 154k miles. is that a lot of miles for this car? like i said i know nothing about reliablility of these. if the car is in good shape and seems to run fine is it worth 3500 bucks? what maintenance issues might be a problem or some things i should have checked into if i do buy the car? what do you guys think? is it likely to last another 45k miles or so?

 

Yea with oil changes and regular service you can get a civic well over 250,000.
I copied this little quote from consumer reports.

"The Honda Civic EX is very reliable and has always done well in CR's tests. Prices range from $7,000 for the '97 to $14,000 for the '02."

 

after i threw a rod out of the block on my del sol, i drove it around on three clyinders for about 10 minutes and it never seized. i work at a saturn dealer, and some of there cars use a honda 3.5L v6 and none of the techs have ever worked on a honda engine except for oil changes. my civic has 150,000 on the engine i swapped in and i drive it hard all the time, it doesn't smoke or burn oil at all.

 

if you do buy the used civic, make sure the first thing you do is change the timing belt.

about a $500 to $700 job.

because hondas have interference engines, which will cause the pistons to crash into the overhead valves if the belt suddenly breaks.

that would really suck.

the belt needs to be changed about every 60,000 miles.

 

if the car is properly maintained then there is no reason why the car wouldnt roll over 300,000 if it isnt abused

 

civic's are like a timex watch. they take a licking and keep on ticking. 154,000 that's about middle aged. still has some time before retirement. but like drbyers said the timing belt definetly be changed if hasn't been replaced for a while.

 

They can be reliable as long as they have regular maintenance service. I have 195K+ miles on my EX 1995 and it still runs great.

 

I have 243000 miles on my civic. Regular maintenance is the key. When buying a used car, maintenance records from a dealer is golden.

 

does this question really need to be asked

 

I have 223,000 miles on my 1994 EX and I let the VTEC kick in all the time (can't get enough of it! I can't wait to hear it when I do a gsr swap!) so usually I rev it up to around 6500 on a daily basis. It doesn't burn ANY oil and it runs as if it were new!