Honda CX650, CX650 Turbo and GL650 – A closer look at the camshaft holder or tacho drive

CX650C, CX650E, GL650, GL700

The 650 engines have a different camshaft holder piece than the 500s due to their electrical fan not requiring the protrusion outside the engine to mount onto, unlike the mechanical fans. Otherwise, the camshaft holder internals are identical and if you chop a CX500 or GL500 camshaft down you can fit a 650 camshaft holder to the front of the engine.

So, this is the holder – this particular one has been blasted prior to painting, so it’s pretty clean:

This is the side which faces the engine:

Looking inside the hole that the end of the camshaft fits into, we can see the gear which mates to the tacho drive portion of the camshaft (see this infopic):

Here you can see an oil channel – still with a small amount of dirt/oil in it:

Here is where the tacho cable mounts – you can see the protrusion which the gear inside is attached to:

Inside this section we can see the thread for the tacho cable retaining screw/bolt:

Shot of the outside showing both:

One popular modification is to replace the Phillips head retaining screw with a hex head or Allen head to make removal easier in the future:

CX650 Turbo

Here are some photos of the CX650 Turbo’s camshaft holder – note the additional oil passageway and lack of mechanical tacho drive:

Here are some photos of the Honda CX650 Turbo camshaft holder, used to illustrate the difference between the Turbo and non-turbo models in this area.

Here are some photos of the Honda CX650 Turbo camshaft holder, used to illustrate the difference between the Turbo and non-turbo models in this area.

The above two photos were provided by edinlr. Thanks!

That’s all for now!

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