Alternator Rebuild

[zxbob]

The way I understood it, Don was talking about this: On worn plates, the grooves match up, i.e.: a "valley" lines up with a raised part and the surfaces make contact. (left)
When you grind off the tips of the raised parts, the flat portions do no longer reach to the bottoms of the "valleys" and you lose contact surface (right)

Did I get this right Don?

Thats how I understand it !

Bob

[NobleHops]

OK, my bad, I was thinking of those 4 grooves in the one drive plate, not the nanoscale surface.

N.

[Don]

Are you thinking of drive clutch plates? In the alternator (as pictured) one side is flat, the other has 4 grooves. Not what you described above.

N.

The way I understood it, Don was talking about this: On worn plates, the grooves match up, i.e.: a "valley" lines up with a raised part and the surfaces make contact. (left)
When you grind off the tips of the raised parts, the flat portions do no longer reach to the bottoms of the "valleys" and you lose contact surface (right)

Did I get this right Don?

Exactly!

You pictured it well - If your wear resembled something like a sawtooth pattern in each plate and you ground away only the high spots, you could wind up with nearly nothing touching . . . . and nearly no friction, which would certainly cause it to wear very rapidly, probably into a worse mess than you had before you messed with it

I agree no lube is necessary upon reassembly - With no lube, it won't slip and as soon as the oil pressure comes up, it's force oiled anyway

Don

[Mike Nixon]

Mike Nixon posted a 'secret' tech bulletin from Honda on his site indicating that one of those two clutch plates was manufactured wrong, resulting in reduced contact surface. Lapping them as was indicated restored mine to flat, increasing the contact area significantly, and necessitating shimming the spring to compensate. His thoughts, and a link to the bulletin are here:

http://www.motorcycleproject.com/motorc ... lutch.html

There are pictures of the before and after on my Smugmug site. Apologies for the inconsistency of the photographs, but you scan still clearly see the difference:

Before:



After:



Not to speak for him but ISTR that Mike is also of opinion that one should NOT lube these plates on reassembly, but I imagine they are pretty quiet when they are.

N.

Yes, visit the link. The engine side disc was made incorrectly. Honda caught it, per the internal memo, but decided to not act on it. So, sanding is indeed not only a good idea, but mandatory, even on a brand new replacement disc, as the problem was never corrected by the factory. I bought new one several years ago and confirmed it was concave also.

[ajs350]

By-the-by, if you want to renew the black background of the 'HONDA' on your crank end caps, it's easy to do. Many guys do what you did and polish them completely and let them that way. If you want the black background, just mask off the outside carefully and spray the entire logo indent with satin black. The take a thin straight edge, wrap one edge tightly with a heavy paper towel sprayed with brake cleaner and drag that over the HONDA to expose the polished letters. It really works well and looks just like the original.

But if you like the covers totally polished - that's great too. Great looking bike you have there!

Dave

Dave, I did what you recommended and it worked real well. Thanks. Ross.