The Honda PCX / Forza / ADV150 / SH Forums

My trusty 14 reg LED PCX has had the noisy clutch bearing problem for well over a year now. Having bought a new driven pulley and other parts to service the bike I've had no luck loosening the variator nut until today. Last time I tried with a homemade tool I managed to bend several 6mm bolts rather than loosen the nut.

So, having made a new tool with ten 6mm bolts to fit into the variator fins (whole in the middle for the socket) and using a breaker bar, the nut loosened with ease - finally!

I've got all the bits removed and cleaned some things up - the variator faces look good with no ridging, the rollers have flat spots as expected, but what is surprising at 19,000 miles the original dual sided ribbed belt looks in very good nick - it's probably lost some width but there are no marks, splits or cracks anywhere on it's surfaces, so I will keep it as a spare assuming the new belt it the correct one (was almost tempted to put it back but 19,000 is a lot of miles).

Having just finished a run of nights I'll continue tomorrow.

19,000 miles on a belt is pushing your luck. Keep it as a backup but let us hope that you never have to use it. It might break any day. I dont know what the schedule is for the 2014 model, but the 2013 model schedule says replace it at 15,000 miles. 4,000 miles over that is really really pushing the belt to its limit.

Damn, the new belt I purchased some time ago (ebay) which said it's for 125-150 bikes matching my year is the wrong one!
The new one is 23100-K36-J01 whereas my old belt is 23100-K35-V00 (now 23100-K35-V01) - dealer says he can get one by tomorrow for £36 inc vat!
I'm not sure what the numbers mean, i.e. K35 vs K36 but I'll order the correct one anyway.

btw - I fitted new rollers and sliders but have a few questions. The rollers have one side sunken in a little compared to the other, all were fitted with that face anti-clockwise rather than alternate facing pairs - does it matter? I saw that Hommie fitted them back to back kind of in his service video.

Also, the three old sliders push and pull on very easy to the metal plate whereas the new ones are a tight fit onto the metal plate - is that usual? They are genuine Honda 22011-KWN-900. Does slider refer to the plate sliding up and down rather than the sliders moving - I assume so given the tight fit?

The bike is back together but not without one thing that proved troublesome and a scary moment.
Holding the drive plates far enough apart to allow the belt to sit down between them was hard to do - the spring is so strong! I tried many times without success which then does not allow the outer variator plate to sit tight against the end of the boss due to not enough slack in the belt to sit up a little from the centre of the variator plates (away from the boss). But I finally managed it.
Then the scary was the bike not starting - it took 3 goes as I forgot I had the side stand down The noisy graunching driven face bearing is a thing of the past - much, much quieter now.
What is strange from a short test ride is that the bike does not seem to pull away from cold like it did before - acceleration is fine and the bike runs fine, but it just does not have the edge it did pulling away. The only thing I did during this work was clean everything of dust and grime, made sure there was no oil or grease on the face surfaces, greased the groves where the three pins sit and fitted new Honda parts comprising 6 rollers, 3 slide pieces, new face set and new Honda belt.
I'll see how it goes when I travel to work.

Sometimes it takes a short time of riding to seat new parts. See if riding for a little bit of time solves the problem.

Mel46 wrote:Sometimes it takes a short time of riding to seat new parts. See if riding for a little bit of time solves the problem.

Yes, this.

you you wrote:

Mel46 wrote:Sometimes it takes a short time of riding to seat new parts. See if riding for a little bit of time solves the problem.

Yes, this.

Thanks - I wondered if the three new slide pieces were a cause of the problem, as the ones that came out almost fell off by themselves whereas the new ones were a tight 'push' fit onto the ramp plate and I found the ramp plate then did not lift off and push down on the movable drive face as easily as it did before (possibly stopping the rollers rising up the groves as easy as they should?) < not sure what effect that would have on things if it is causing any issues.

Hope the variator nut was tightened properly without mistakenly pinching the belt while doing so. If so, nut is not tight now, after running.
Common mistake.
Fish

fish wrote:Hope the variator nut was tightened properly without mistakenly pinching the belt while doing so. If so, nut is not tight now, after running. Common mistake. Fish

Hope so - that's why it took so long to get the belt seated inside the drive faces so there was enough slack the other end - it seemed free with the variator tight against the boss. I run it and throttled a bit with the cover off to see things sort of worked.

I do recall one time when Maddiedog and I changed out the belt and we didn't tighten the nut enough. It came off when we were out in the boondocks. Luckily someone came along and asked if we needed any tools for the job. She went home and sent her father out with a compressor and a lot of other tools. Between his tools and ours we had the bike back on the road in no time.

The point of this is that if that nut wants to come loose it may not do it right away, so be aware of it and carry some tools for the first 30 - 50 miles. I was just lucky. You could be stuck somewhere.

iceman wrote:greased the groves where the three pins sit

There are three pins that slide in three curved grooves in the face set, movable assembly - when the belt moves inward on the rear drive, the plates are pushed apart and the outer slides around these pins (clockwise) that also lock the parts in place. This is the only thing that needs grease besides the internal bearings themselves (which are the bits that suffered due to Honda not supplying decent bearings or enough grease in the past) - no other grease to be applied anywhere. There is a bush that slides over this greased section to stop the grease leaking out (there are also two seals on the shaft)
Honda supply grease with the face set driven complete assembly. My original had a dark grey loose grease that kind of gets everywhere when the bush is removed, whereas the grease now supplied with the driven face seems to be a thicker semi white grease.

The pull away and acceleration seem fine, but soon after the belt and roller change I've noticed a noise at lower revs that I believe was not there before - a spinny low 'whoosh' noise. I've resisted taking all the bits off again to look (mostly that darn plastic panel to come off again) but wonder if it really is something to do with the new belt (official from dealer)

iceman wrote:My trusty 14 reg LED PCX has had the noisy clutch bearing problem for well over a year now. Having bought a new driven pulley and other parts to service the bike I've had no luck loosening the variator nut until today. Last time I tried with a homemade tool I managed to bend several 6mm bolts rather than loosen the nut.

So, having made a new tool with ten 6mm bolts to fit into the variator fins (whole in the middle for the socket) and using a breaker bar, the nut loosened with ease - finally!

I've got all the bits removed and cleaned some things up - the variator faces look good with no ridging, the rollers have flat spots as expected, but what is surprising at 19,000 miles the original dual sided ribbed belt looks in very good nick - it's probably lost some width but there are no marks, splits or cracks anywhere on it's surfaces, so I will keep it as a spare assuming the new belt it the correct one (was almost tempted to put it back but 19,000 is a lot of miles).

Having just finished a run of nights I'll continue tomorrow.

What happened re: the clutch bearing?

RobV wrote:

iceman wrote:My trusty 14 reg LED PCX has had the noisy clutch bearing problem for well over a year now. Having bought a new driven pulley and other parts to service the bike I've had no luck loosening the variator nut until today. Last time I tried with a homemade tool I managed to bend several 6mm bolts rather than loosen the nut.
So, having made a new tool with ten 6mm bolts to fit into the variator fins (whole in the middle for the socket) and using a breaker bar, the nut loosened with ease - finally!
I've got all the bits removed and cleaned some things up - the variator faces look good with no ridging, the rollers have flat spots as expected, but what is surprising at 19,000 miles the original dual sided ribbed belt looks in very good nick - it's probably lost some width but there are no marks, splits or cracks anywhere on it's surfaces, so I will keep it as a spare assuming the new belt it the correct one (was almost tempted to put it back but 19,000 is a lot of miles).
Having just finished a run of nights I'll continue tomorrow.

What happened re: the clutch bearing?

About a 18 months ago it start to make a graunching kind of noise what was heard quite loudly when wheeling the bike or doing slow speeds - it's a common fault on many PCX.

The parts catalogue (thanks to whoever posted that) shows two options for each of the clutch bearings. On the needle bearing theres NTN or SCHAEFFLER. With the radial ball bearing there's NTN or NSK. Is this to address known issues? Which is the better option? Apologies if this is a repeat question, I'm new to PCXs and new to the forum.

RobV wrote:The parts catalogue (thanks to whoever posted that) shows two options for each of the clutch bearings. On the needle bearing theres NTN or SCHAEFFLER. With the radial ball bearing there's NTN or NSK. Is this to address known issues? Which is the better option? Apologies if this is a repeat question, I'm new to PCXs and new to the forum.

Better to replace the whole part, part 8 I believe if your not in europe as it's cheap in the US or Thailand, costs around £110 if bought from the rip-off UK. You only need to worry if you have this issue - lots of stuff here if you search and lots of youtube videos demonstrating the problem.

My thinking is that new bearings were introduced because the ones currently in service were crap given it's a known problem with the PCX. The Schaeffler/NSK bearing combination would have cost me about $25. I went for the more expensive NTN/NTN @about $40 in total. The whole assembly would have cost me $180 - but if it's fitted with the crap bearings you'll be doing it again in another 10K or so. I'll let you know how it goes.

RobV... Which bearings exactly did you purchase? I'd like to get the best choice, too, so I only have to buy & install once....

grndslm wrote:RobV... Which bearings exactly did you purchase? I'd like to get the best choice, too, so I only have to buy & install once....

I bought the NTN bearings. Fitting them required some specialist bearing removal tools (or a very clever mechanic - mine is an ex aircraft engineer). If you had to pay someone to install the bearings into the driven variator face (not sure what it's called) then buying the complete unit will probably become cost effective. I wanted to be sure which bearings I got though.