HFT Swash Plate electric motor
- Thread starter Knob
- Start date
Babarci
New member
Some time after Honda released the DN-01 there was a recall for the TCM. They exchanged the TCM for new one free of charge. I really do not know why the recall is made. You can ask from your local Honda (by VIN) is the TCM exchanged on your bike or is there still the faulty one used.
Probably Honda will not provide this service any more, but who knows, you may ask anyway.
Probably Honda will not provide this service any more, but who knows, you may ask anyway.
Babarci
New member
Thank you for that bit of information about recalls!
Following on from Knob's good work on the issue, I have ordered one of these 12tooth shift motors which he referenced in reply 4. I already have the 11tooth shift motor that he compared to the OE motor in the 1st post. You will see that the gear shaft OD is 8.8mm. Knobs pic shows 8.7mm. What else is similar or different remains to be seen when I have the motor in hand and compare it to the
other cheap 11T motor. I'll post my findings in a few weeks to see if I can make 1 good one from 2.
www.aliexpress.com
other cheap 11T motor. I'll post my findings in a few weeks to see if I can make 1 good one from 2.
53.64C$ |Complete Power Shift Control Motor For Honda TRX500FA Foreman Rubicon 500 01 14| | - AliExpress
Smarter Shopping, Better Living! Aliexpress.com
www.aliexpress.com
Last edited:
Thank youFollowing on from Knob's good work on the issue, I have ordered one of these 12tooth shift motors which he referenced in reply 4. I already have the 11tooth shift motor that he compared to the OE motor in the 1st post. You will see that the gear shaft OD is 8.8mm. Knobs pic shows 8.7mm. What else is similar or different remains to be seen when I have the motor in hand and compare it to the
other cheap 11T motor. I'll post my findings in a few weeks to see if I can make 1 good one from 2.
53.64C$ |Complete Power Shift Control Motor For Honda TRX500FA Foreman Rubicon 500 01 14| | - AliExpress
Smarter Shopping, Better Living! Aliexpress.com
My friend ran into the problem of premature death (about 29000 km if I recall) of the HFT control electric motor, so we had a choice to test the idea of mixing two cheaper chinese made ATV transmission control motors. Few words about results we got:
- mixing motors is mechanically possible, just remember to use the part with ball bearing, oil gasket and brushes from OEM el-motor. And a rotor (with 12 teeth) and a part with magnets from a new ATV el-motor.
- after mixing motors I measured idle current both the mixed and new OEM motor. The mixed motor's idle current was about 10% less than the new OEM motor has. Looking promising.
- after installing the mixed motor on bike it first started to work as supposed. It did not blow the fuse HFT MOTOR 30A. But we got intermittently error message from TCM: ERROR 26 Swash plate control motor lock.
We checked the mixed motor and no mechanical locking was detected, it turned freely. After some thinking we decided the error 26 point like the control el-motor is consuming too much current, the current sensing circuit in TCM is a bit too sensitive. Well, it did not blow the above mentioned 30A fuse, so no real trouble state appeared.
Conclusion is the TCM el-motor current sensing is a bit too sensitive for the mixed el-motor to operate. The difference is not very big because half the time bike worked normally with mixed el-motor. And it may vary from bike to bike, on some bikes it may not give the overcurrent error 26. The mixed el-motor itself worked fine, we checked it also with mechanical load on the bench. It just obviously was consuming a bit more current under load conditions than OEM el-motor and that was the culprit for error 26 coming up time to time. After resetting this error bike ran normally for some time. I say again: this situation may vary from bike to bike as there are some tolerances in TCM's circuit measuring el-motor current, the mixed motor may work fine on some bikes.
- so after all we had to install a new OEM control motor on this particular bike. End of story.
P.S. Also the expencive Honda OEM transmission control electric motor looks like produced in China.
Last edited:
Knob - what was the bike/transmission actually doing when the fault code came up? Could it still be ridden? What did it display - a dash on the shift/gear indicator? Re-reading your post seems to suggest that you are assuming that a higher current draw caused code 26 - Correct? But the no load tests on both the OEM and mixed motors showed 10% less on the mixed motor. Code 26 says ....motor lock (less than 0.88v). No mention of current draw (but code 28 can indication a load/binding problem with the swash plate and test 6&7 are the same). In reading the testing procedure for code 26 starting on page 11.42 I see no mention of what this 0.88v relates to. Do you know?
9. Swash Plate Control Motor Operate Inspection (Clockwise) Apply battery voltage to the control motor 2P connector terminals and check that the control motor operation. Does the control motor turn (Clockwise)? YES - GO TO STEP 10. NO - Faulty control motor.
10. Swash Plate Control Motor Operate Inspection (Counterclockwise) Apply battery voltage (with the current flow reversed as shown in 11-45) to the control motor 2P connector terminals and check that the control motor operation. Does the control motor turn (Counterclockwise)? YES - Replace the TCM with a new one, and recheck (HFT initialization procedure: page 11-93). NO - Faulty control motor.
Step 10 seems counter intuitive - why wouldn't the motor turn in the opposite direction? If it does: Replace the TCM with a new one - this doesn't make sense to me. It seems odd to me - what am I missing?
Also - did you do the HFT initialization procedure it mentions at the start of code 26 tests?
All very curious.
9. Swash Plate Control Motor Operate Inspection (Clockwise) Apply battery voltage to the control motor 2P connector terminals and check that the control motor operation. Does the control motor turn (Clockwise)? YES - GO TO STEP 10. NO - Faulty control motor.
10. Swash Plate Control Motor Operate Inspection (Counterclockwise) Apply battery voltage (with the current flow reversed as shown in 11-45) to the control motor 2P connector terminals and check that the control motor operation. Does the control motor turn (Counterclockwise)? YES - Replace the TCM with a new one, and recheck (HFT initialization procedure: page 11-93). NO - Faulty control motor.
Step 10 seems counter intuitive - why wouldn't the motor turn in the opposite direction? If it does: Replace the TCM with a new one - this doesn't make sense to me. It seems odd to me - what am I missing?
Also - did you do the HFT initialization procedure it mentions at the start of code 26 tests?
All very curious.
Last edited:
Owner did riding the bike in a normal way while the dashboard started to blink error code 26. Bike did not accelerate well after code appeared, but was ridable.
After the error code was erased everything worked well for some time, maybe some tens of km-s.
We didn't dig so deep this time. Northern summer is too short for this kind of science.
As both motors (OEM and mixed one) worked well on bench, we just did solve the issue by exchanging the motor to the new OEM one in last hand and lived on.
Obviously the TCM is doing some current measurements for the transmission control motor and very probably starts to limit this current for safety reasons, saving so the TCM output. Once the motor fuse (30A) was blown by first (broken OEM) motor, maybe this caused something bad to the TCM motor current measurement system, maybe it became too sensitive after it. Blowing 30A fuse demands about 450W of power, this may spoil shunt resistor, at least partially. And current measuring may become too sensitive. And no, we did not open the TCM.
In some places this service manual is in very japan style, you must be a samurai to figure out what they really ment.
I see in Step 10 they say if the control motor starts to rotate in opposite direction without bike running, then the TCM must be faulty.
Babarci
New member
As much as I remember, no. Resetting the code 26 was done at the roadside and driving continued.
In reply 32 I commented: Step 10 seems counter intuitive - why wouldn't the motor turn in the opposite direction? If it does: Replace the TCM with a new one - this doesn't make sense to me. It seems odd to me - what am I missing?
Today I tested the 11T motor that Knob posted at the start as per step 9 and 10 in the manual above. Test 9 the shaft turns CW and in 10 it turns CCW as I expected BUT contrary to what the manual says in 10 - which is to replace the TCM if it turns CCW.
When the 12T motor arrives I'll report my findings on steps 9 & 10. All very mysterious!
I also tested the resistance across the 2 terminals of the 11T motor - 0.9 ohm. I'll do the same on the 12T motor and the OE motor when I get to it, in order to see what might have caused Knob's friend's bike to show code 26 when he fitted the mixed motor. I can understand load causing a high current draw but if the load is the same and the motors are virtually/visually the same it shouldn't throw a fault code - but it did.
All very mysterious.
Today I tested the 11T motor that Knob posted at the start as per step 9 and 10 in the manual above. Test 9 the shaft turns CW and in 10 it turns CCW as I expected BUT contrary to what the manual says in 10 - which is to replace the TCM if it turns CCW.
When the 12T motor arrives I'll report my findings on steps 9 & 10. All very mysterious!
I also tested the resistance across the 2 terminals of the 11T motor - 0.9 ohm. I'll do the same on the 12T motor and the OE motor when I get to it, in order to see what might have caused Knob's friend's bike to show code 26 when he fitted the mixed motor. I can understand load causing a high current draw but if the load is the same and the motors are virtually/visually the same it shouldn't throw a fault code - but it did.
All very mysterious.I had to fit a new battery to my Dino today. What a mongrel job - starting at the Givi top box and moving forward, it took more than 10 minutes - actually a whole lot more. 
While I had the plastic off the rear section for the first time, I took the opportunity to access the TCM so that I could check the resistance across the 2 wires that go to the HFT swash plate motor, following on from Knob's findings in reply 29, wherein he suspected that the 'mixed motor' (made up from 2 after market motors from Honda quad bike HFTs) was drawing more current the OE motor. Well, the OE motor has a resistance of 1.6 ohm at the TCM plug.So, using Ohm's Law, with a nominal voltage of 12v the OE motor draws 7.5 amps and the 11T motor I mention above with resistance of 0.9 ohm draws 13.3 amps. While the I don't yet have the 12T 'mixed motor' to test yet, the result is interesting.
It's not that simple. We need the actual current draw, which I'll get.
While I had the plastic off the rear section for the first time, I took the opportunity to access the TCM so that I could check the resistance across the 2 wires that go to the HFT swash plate motor, following on from Knob's findings in reply 29, wherein he suspected that the 'mixed motor' (made up from 2 after market motors from Honda quad bike HFTs) was drawing more current the OE motor. Well, the OE motor has a resistance of 1.6 ohm at the TCM plug.
It's not that simple. We need the actual current draw, which I'll get.
Last edited: