In April of last year, on my 4th or 5th ride after finally moving close enough to my job to ride my Zero to work, the BMS board failed. It took 8 months and ~$1000 to get that fixed; mostly due to waiting on Zero to ship a replacement. (It would have been $1600, but Zero misquoted the price to my dealer, and to the dealer's credit they stood their ground when Zero tried to backtrack.)
While unloading the bike after that episode, the bike had an unplanned dismount that caused what appeared to be cosmetic damage to the bars, mirrors, a few lights, etc. Around $500 to fix but can't complain because it was my fault.
After retrieving it from the dealer for getting that mishap fixed, I got it home and it didn't feel quite right on my initial ride, sort of hesitant it seemed. A later ride confirmed problems; I had no throttle response at all at a few stops. No error lights on the dash, but either pushing the bike forward or turning the key off and back on would get it going again (until the next stop). Got it back home, loaded it on the truck again and took it back to the dealer.
The latest word from Zero, via the dealer, is that the motor is bad, and they can't time it. They want $1600 for the part, and I'm sure it will take another 8 months or more to get here.
So I now have a bike with <3000 miles on it, which I've been able to ride once in the last year (only to find out it was still broken). It does not run, and I don't want to put any more significant money into it. I've thought of the following options:
1. Find a used motor. It would have to be pretty cheap and available in a month or two; I don't really have the patience with this thing anymore to pay a lot or wait a long time.
2. Sell it for scrap, or as a project bike. I'd have to find someone who was interested, and I suspect I wouldn't get much for it (though enough to cover the last one or two repairs would be enough, as I've already written this thing off as my worst purchase ever).
3. Part it out. This would probably be the most lucrative thing to do, but I'd have to disassemble it (I have the skills, but not really the time or work area), and I'd have to worry about hazmat shipping and all that for the batteries if it wasn't local**.
Any thoughts/ideas/other options? I'll take sympathy too
(** Variant that kinda intrigues me: keep the batteries and charger, toss the Zero BMS and build my own, and buy a big-a$$ inverter so I'd have a semi-portable power source to run A/C tools anywhere for hours. At least I would be using the one part that Zero had enough confidence in to make claims about; i.e., the "300,000-mile" batteries. Ha!)
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Topic: 2012 DS end of the road -- would like some advice (Read 1593 times)