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[cirrus pete]

I need to tighten the belt on my 2011 S as it has stretched a bit. I was trying to do it this weekend starting with loosening the motor with a long 7/32nd hex key and a 5/16th key for the rear and front bolts respectively. However, I couldn't even get the first rear one loose. I starting with the top rear bold and was putting a substantial amount of force on the long shaft of the hex key, but couldn't get it to budge. I am assuming they are lefty-loosey and so I was putting my weight down on the key with long shaft of the key pointed towards the rear wheel. I felt the metal of the key flexing but could not get that bolt to budge. I gave up because I was worried I was doing something wrong. I know they use lok-tite, but this was hard. Do I need to whack the key with a mallet to loosen or does it sound like I need professional help? Nervous to do something wrong.
thanks

[Richard230]

I looked at my 2012 Zero and the internal hex-head bolts looks easy to get to and are exposed enough to get a big wrench, or impact driver with a hex bit attached, on them with little effort.  If you can get to the bolt heads, which are completely exposed on my bike, you can try loosening them with a set of Vicegrips, after spraying with a product like WD-40 and tapping the ends of the bolts lightly with a hammer to help loosen the bond and help the lubricant enter the bolt threads.  If you can't get to the bolts easily, try heating them with a small butane torch to break the locktite seal.  Beware of rounding off the insides of the bolts, though. If you bugger them up too much, you may have to use a bolt extractor or drill them out.  

[Harlan]

Hi Pete.  Loosening the bolts can be a bit tricky the first time.  For the front two bolts, nothing beats a socket wrench with an extension.  As Richard suggests, vicegrips can help you get some leverage on the back two, or if you have a piece of pipe with a small diameter to grab the end of the allen key with.  A little heat can help break down the loctite although I've never found that necessary.  I would avoid using a hammer.  Just make sure you have the key all the way in the bolt so you don't strip it, and turn it with confidence.

[cirrus pete]

Thanks will try these suggestions. Didn't help that I was working in my unheated garage in 20f weather freezing my butt off. I didn't want to keep at it any longer than necessary.

[zap mc]

These rear motor bolts are always a problem as in the early days Zero used to use way too much loctite on everything, hopefully later models will not suffer too badly but Zero do recommend using a blow torch to loosen any loctite.

To prevent the allen wrench from twisting round you may want to use a proper 7/32 socket instead of a thin wrench as this will transfer more of your torque into twisting the screw rather than flexing the shaft of the allen key. To avoid having to use a ball ended allen wrench maybe consider removing the footpeg to allow a straight run at the screw, and also make sure you have a really crisp and new allen key end and grind it down if necessary to minimise any slippage due to rounding off the hex socket hole. One it is cracked off it will be easy to do again but it is just doing it for the first time that is problematical.

[manlytom]

I need to tighten the belt on my 2011 S as it has stretched a bit.

hi, whats your mileage that is stretched already. My one (2011S) looks still neat, but I just shy of 1000 miles only.

cheers
T

[cirrus pete]

I need to tighten the belt on my 2011 S as it has stretched a bit.

hi, whats your mileage that is stretched already. My one (2011S) looks still neat, but I just shy of 1000 miles only.

cheers
T

I ride the bike daily, day in day out in all kinds of weather here in the NYC area but the daily commute is very short so I am putting less than 2 miles a day on the bike. The bike has around 500 miles. The bike started making a whistling noise when the throttle was engaged which stops when I release the throttle. Zero indicated it was probably a loose belt. I bought a click tester to test the tenison and it appears to be loose.

[pinaz]

Old topic... but it didn't seem right to create a new one, since it is the same sort of topic:

Having just tensioned the chain on my 2011 Zero XU, I hope there is a special place in Hell for:

a) the person(s) at Zero that placed the lower left motor mounting bolt opposite the difficult to remove right foot-peg
b) the person(s) at Zero that decided to save a few cents with the YFS metal-as-soft-as-butter fasteners

Said Allen bolt was supposed to have been 7/32", but Zero or the dealer had pre-stripped the inside such that only a 5mm could manage to be inserted (with the additional risk, then, of stripping the bolt inside).

Working on a Zero really makes me appreciate how incredibly well engineered Japanese and European bikes are in comparison.

I hope the engineers at Zero are forced to work on their own creation; I'm sure that would result in these sorts of things getting resolved before production starts.

[trikester]

Definitely do not use a ball end Allen. I cut two Allen wrenches short, so there would be less to twist, and use a socket on an extension to hold the short piece Allen.

If you go way back to my "Now I'm upset with Zero" post (which has since morphed into a different thread) I thought (the first time) that these were metric. I stripped out the hole in one and had to drill through it and use an "Easy Out" to remove the bolt and replace it. Nowhere (that I could find) did Zero say in the owner's manual that these four bolts were American while everything else on the bike is metric.

BTW - The "Easy Out" was anything but easy.

Every time since then it has been fairly straight forward. I have to do this quite often because I'm running chain drive.

Trikester

[Richard230]

I adjusted my belt tension at around 3500 miles.  The rear motor bolts were not too difficult to loosen once I managed to thread my Allen wrench past the belt and I didn't need any heat to break them loose. I just used a little Liquid Wrench and some tapping with a hammer.  I also used Vice Grip pliers to add leverage to the L-wench.  On the front bolts I used a socket Allen and a ratchet wrench with a wobble-extension. 

The only problem that I had was trying to remove the heel guard above the foot peg from the frame. I ended up stripping one of the soft Allen cap bolts and I had to resort to cutting a groove in the cap with a Dremel tool and using a blade-screwdriver socket attachment on an impact driver to remove it.  I then replaced the Allen bolts that hold on the heel guard with some black painted metric standard bolts that I had in my fastener collection.  That convinced me to also paint the aluminum heel guard to match the bolt color.  The next time I need to adjust the motor mount bolts it will be easier because removing the heel guard gives slightly better access to the rear bolts.

Photo attached.

[Richard230]

Here is photo showing the rear upper mounting bolt

[Richard230]

And here is a photo showing the lower rear mounting bolt.  As has been said previously, be very careful not to strip those Allen fasteners.  Once the inside of the bolt heads become rounded a bit they will be really difficult to remove and you might have to have a shop perform the work with their special tools.  (Most motorcycle shops working on old Japanese motorcycles are very experienced when it comes to removing frozen fasteners with stripped heads.)

[trikester]

I have to adjust for chain stretch so often that I finally took the heel guard off and left it off. 

The last time I replaced the chain I went through the web catalog listing of a large supplier of chains. I was looking at the cc displacement ratings on 420 chains. They ran from 50cc to 350cc so I picked the 350cc rated chain and it doesn't stretch as fast as other chains have.

I glad that the 2013's have gone to the 520 chain. The 420 was a little light for the torque of these bikes.

Trikester

[pinaz]

For what it is worth, I found a way to access the hard-to-access lower left bolt without having to remove the foot peg.  It worked for me, but your mileage may vary...

I found that I had a 7/32" Allen/hex drive bit in a security bit set.  After securely inserting it by hand into the bolt, I drove it with a 1/4" wrench/spanner.

Since the bit is fairly short and the wrench/spanner doesn't add to the height, it fit with clearance to spare.