Honda Car Forum

how do i set a 95 honda civic's timing?

buy timing light.buy haynes manual. follow 11 steps. basically it is adjusted by twisiting the distributor. if u want to do it right buy the book.

Haynes manuals suck. They take an "educated guess" at the proper torque specs(by calculating break away torque, which is inacurate). Get a helms manual(factory service manual), they're the real deal specs from the engineers that actually designed the engines/cars. There a few places you can download them for free( just do a search).To set the timing on your civic, you have to jump the service connector that's under the passenger side kick-panel with a paperclip. It's the same plug you need to jump to pull codes from the ecu. You'll need a timing light, as barely touching the distributor will advance/retard the timing, even if it didn't feel like it moved. Loosen the bolts to the distributor, start the engine and let it idle until the fan comes on, everything else should be off(air conditioner, headlights, stereo, etc). Connect the timing light to the #1 spark plug wire and point it at the timing belt cover/crank snout. The pointer on the timing cover should be pointing to a number/mark on the crank hub. Turning the distributor toward the front bumper will retard timing, and toward the firewall will advance timing. Stock timing should be about 12-16 degrees BTDC, and is indicated by the red timing mark. If you're trying to advance it as far as you can, you should do it on a hot day. If you advance it as far as you can on a cold day, you might get detonation when the weather starts to warm up.So, with that said, to advance it farther than stock timing for performance, start from stock timing, and SLOWLY advance it a single degree at a time. When you notice the engine start to get a little shaky(or rougher idle) back it off by 1.5 degrees. That shaky/rough idle is slight detonation(that little bit won't hurt the engine at the moment, but the damage is comulative), so if you notice it again later on when the weather gets hotter, back off the timing some more.After you're done setting the timing, turn off the car, tighten the bolts to the distributor, check the timing one last time to make sure it didn't move while tightening the bolts, and remove the paperclip from the connector. Some people will say to reset the ECU after this, but it's not necessary.

When I got my 94 Civic the engine was knocking real bad (after I fixed the exhaust). I found out the timing had extra 15 degree of advance (16 degree factory + 15 degree extra). The engine could have suffered fatal damage. Whoever did the timing, knew just enough about timing to screw things up.I looked up about 5 sources and it seems that they are all vague (on using the timing mark), probably because it turns out the factory service manual is also very vague.I used to think timing is something anybody could do, but now I say you should get somebody experienced to SHOW you at least once - or you could be asking for major engine damage if you did it wrong.