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[WiscoZeroPilot]

Just picked up a early Zero X.  I believe it's a 2008 (possibly an '09).

I'm the third owner.  I know both of the owners, and I'm good friends with the 2nd owner, so I know a bit of the life this bike has lead.  Basically, my buddy barely used this bike.  The good news, it bike is in very good condition overall.  The bad news...he didn't maintain the batteries.  Along with one in the bike, I have one additional battery as well as the original charger.

Neither the battery in the bike or the additional battery will take a charge.  Looking online, the error code flashing (2) on the charger (RoHS 912-4800) equals low voltage.

This is my first go at an electric motorcycle, I'm not new to this type of battery technology.  I'm an R/C enthusiast, and have pretty extensive experience with LiPo and LiPoly batteries.

My first intuition is to carefully disassemble each battery, measure each individual cell, and determine how many possible usable/damaged cells there are.  From there, I would possibly try to 'bring back to life' some of the dead cells.  I've had a fair amount of success forcing a small amount of current into a over-discharged pack for a short amount of time.  Once it has some voltage reading, I would then charge using normal charging system.

Depending on how this goes, I could possibly make one functional battery out of the two, non-functional batteries I currently have.

Suggestions & comments are totally welcome.  Any help is definitely appreciated!

regards-
Eric

[protomech]

Hopefully Doctorbass will drop by here shortly - he's been inside the batteries probably more than anyone here who doesn't work for Zero. But in general, yes this approach will probably revive some number of the cells. If you can charge at constant current, I've seen a 0.1C charge rate recommended to try to revive over-discharged cells (don't recall source, you'll want to do more research). Battery University recommends end-of-lifeing cells that read < 1.5V.

Take a look at this thread:
http://electricmotorcycleforum.com/boards/index.php?topic=467.0

[WiscoZeroPilot]

protomech, thanks for the link.  I'd read that and that helped nudge me in the direction I 'think' i'm headed. 

First, I want to be sure to know exactly what I have.  As of today, I now have two chargers.  From what I can tell, the most current charger software I have is v 1.11 (1.14 is the most current, correct?).

Not sure exactly what motor this has, and don't really know about controller/software options (are there options) for this bike.  How can I check what I have?

thanks for any and all help-
Eric

[Richard230]

You might also want to ask your questions in this forum:  http://www.elmoto.net/forum.php

There are plenty of people there who have trashed a lot of batteries and seem to know what they are talking about.