Roasted Rotor Chronicles
Cover off. I got about 350 miles before this one burned out. This rotor was used and must have been left out to rust. The entire cavity was filled with rust and pieces of insulation from the windings. There was no burnt/electrical smell as with the first one so I believe the rusted condition of the rotor was the cause of this failure. Knowing what I know now I would never accept a rusty unit.
This shows the ElectrexUS stator installed and the original Honda unit in comparison. Note the machined surface of the OEM unit, the Electrex unit was not machined and required light filing to get it to fit in the cover. My picture is not very clear - sorry about that - it was getting late and I was in a hurry.
You will need a good size breaker to get the retaining bolt out. I used my torque wrench because it was the longest thing I had. You can put it in 5th gear and step on the brake to hold the crankshaft from turning.
Here's the "secret tool". This is an axle from some motorcycle that has the same thread size of the rotor (not the crankshaft bolt!). This is a hard piece which is a must in this job. Don't use some soft metric bolt.
The axle is threaded into the rotor until it bottoms on the end of the crankshaft. Make sure the axle end is flat with very little taper. You don't want it to go into the hole of the crankshaft - just push on the end of the crank. The vice grips are used to turn it in very tight. You will have to step on the brake in fifth gear to hold the crank. Now tap around the rotor and the end of the axle. Tap! don't bang with a big hammer. You can see the hammer I use is a simple 14oz. job. You may have to twist a little more and tap a couple of times but the rotor will pop right off. The Honda tool to do this is only about 10 bucks and I highly recommend it.
The end of the crank is a taper that the rotor fits onto with a friction hold - no key. This area should be dry. If you have oil it's a crank end seal and will have to be replaced - mucho work and expense.
I strongly advise you to NOT use a rebuilt rotor - pop for the OEM Honda unit. I have had two rebuilt units that would not put out enough current to charge the battery under 4000 rpm. One of them would barely charge at all and the other wouldn't charge after it heated up. Picture of rebuilt rotor installed before the crank bolt is replaced and torqued. This is 58-72 ft.lb and may require someone to step on the brake while you run the torque wrench.
It took me about 30 minutes to do this and most of that time was cleaning the rust out of the cavity.