Back in 2013, Tim Davies had the U-joint fail on his Honda Pacific Coast PC800 motorcycle. As our beloved PC800s get older, we will start experiencing more U-joint failures in the fleet. In the last year, one or two people have experienced this failure and reported on it in the Facebook group and on the IPCRC. Below is Tim’s description of events when his U-joint failed.
In case you wondered what a PC800’s blown universal joint looks like, here is mine from 2013 after it self destructed on the Pacific Coast Highway Just south of Santa Barbara, California.
I knew it was going bad before I left New York State, but I was hoping it would last until I got home. You can feel it going by turning the rear wheel by hand on the center stand and there is a notchy feel to the spin.
It failed at about 55 mph and felt like I was riding on skinny, 6 inch high speed bumps spaced close together. Fortunately I was a few feet from an exit off the multi-lane roadway and stopped immediately on the exit ramp.
There was no other damage to the final drive. It was repaired in 3 days and I was on my way.
Tim Davies
As I write this post in the summer of 2019, it is starting to get a little hard to find genuine Honda parts for our bikes. Mother Honda no longer stocks this part but you can occasionally find new old stock at Honda dealers and good condition U joints are showing up on eBay. Sometimes the part is listed as a yolk joint rather than a U joint.
The part number for 1989 through 1996 Honda Pacific Coasts is 40200-MR5-003. There may be other Honda bikes from that era that use a similar U-joint although I have not yet done the research to identify a replacement. The final drive is fully interchangeable with later bikes so I expect that this U-joint might be, too.