I have a 2000 Civic SI (engine) and just passed 77,777 miles. Manual recommends changing the timing belt at 105,000 (or so) or at 7 years, and we are now in year 13.

So... can anyone speak from actual experience and give some advice, should I change my timing belt now or wait?

 

Change it now. and do the water pump, use OEM parts.

 

Better now then when it at the risk of shearing teeth off then you'll have other issues, the numbers given in manuals are usually MAX limits so you really want to shoot for something under said limit.

 

The numbers in manuals are actually extremely conservative limits. But better safe than sorry. Although, you will most likely be fine. That kind of depends on your driving environment and habits.

First turn off your brights. Then change the T belt and water pump, tensioner, and cam and crank seals. You can buy a gates kit if you wanna save a little $$ but still get quality parts. Or go OEM.

 

environment is Denver, Colorado, so sometimes wintery, but up until this year the car rarely saw snow or even rain.
Driving habits: for the last 9 years this has been a weekends and fun car, driven very conservatively (despite redline in pic) hence the low mileage, but just this year is now my daily driver

and re. turning off the brights, that's an integrated shift light

so the manual is conservative, and I am WAY below the milage recommended, but way over the years. So... I mean I don't want to drop money on unnecessary parts (or even worse, paying someone), I'm not being cheap, just trying to make an informed decision.

 

Cheap insurance to just do the maintenance

 

Are you doing this yourself? If you are, the gates kit is like $85. With the OEM seals and other small parts, you're looking maybe $120. Even if you got Honda genuine parts (www.bernardiparts.com is a good site), it's like $225ish shipped. I usually buy:
-T belt
-tensioner and spring and bolt
-water pump
-front crank seal
-rear cam plug
-front cam seals
-honda coolant
-accesory belts

Try rockauto.com if you wanna get the Gates OE kit. Or the bernardiparts.com site for genuine Honda stuff.

You're only at 75ish% of the mileage...but you are approaching 200% of the time schedule. So you're not way off needing to do it. Denver isn't hard on T belts...but for a couple hundred bucks, it's not worth it to YOLO on this one.

Plus, you can take the opportunity to order other small parts if you go with the genuine Honda route. I usually stock up on Honda fluids, greases, and oil drain crush washers, and S2000 filters when I order stuff for the timing belt in order to bundle on shipping.

 

You should visually inspect the belt and go from there (miles and years won't mean anything if it's cracked or frayed). I'm with the others in saying it's cheap insurance to just replace it anyway.