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[ShreddinPB]

Hey guys, I picked up a 2011 Zero S a little over a year ago, the battery was going bad so the guy sold it to me for cheap. It could only go like 5 miles so I was able to ride it home. It then sat for over a year with no power, battery died completely. I got my hands on some Nissan Leaf cells and rebuilt the battery, that all went easy! The problem I have is I get no response from the throttle at all. I go thru the startup procedure in the manual, and nothing. I get no error messages, the lights on the battery are great, get one beep from bms when you turn it on which says it passed self test. The little red triangle isnt doing anything at all.
I was going to test the throttle wires next, but before I did that I was wondering if there was an easier way to find out what is going on?
I think the newer ones have bluetooth, does the 2011?
If I plug an obd scanner on the port, will that give me any info on what could be wrong?
Do the throttle on these just die from sitting too long?
Lots of questions
Thanks!

[BrianTRice@gmail.com]

Your throttle should be a simple Magura linear potentiometer model that is a commodity item you can get from a few different vendors, and can be troubleshot pretty easily:
- https://zeromanual.com/wiki/Magura_Throttle

[ShreddinPB]

Your throttle should be a simple Magura linear potentiometer model that is a commodity item you can get from a few different vendors, and can be troubleshot pretty easily:
- https://zeromanual.com/wiki/Magura_Throttle

Awesome, thanks for the info, I did find on here that you can put a 5k pot in its place to test, ordered some of those.
I also found out there is a light on the motor controller, going to check that to see if there is any error codes.

[Alan. Yes THAT Alan]

I also have a 2011 S. Nothing is bluetoothed on it. The little OBDI-looking port under the "gas tank" is where you could connect a laptop computer and talk to the motorcycle's computer.
Before you spend a lot of time and money ordering random parts online, I recommend narrowing down exactly what's gone wrong.

The throttle is simply a 5K potentiometer with 2 wires coming off. The hardest part about checking it is connecting your multimeter to the tiny plugs. I just shoved two needles through the plastic of the two wires, then alligator-clipped the multimeter to the needles. If that doesn't give you a range of roughly 0K to 5K, then the throttle is bad. Not likely, but possible. I have three throttles at my house. None of them is bad except the one that I bought, new, online.

The place where I was having throttle problems is under the "gas tank" where the throttle plugs in to some other wires. There's a lose connection somewhere and whenever those wires would shift and move to port, then I would lose all throttle response. My solution was to zip-time them all tight towards the starboard side and I never had a problem since.

Assuming throttle and connection are good, then I would look at the motor-controller. It's on the far-bottom of your motorcycle. These Alltrax controllers DO go bad sometimes. (Mine went bad while the motorcycle was still under warranty and Zero replaced it for free.) Make sure your throttle wires are attached to the controller and a mouse didn't unplug one. Or that you didn't accidentally plug stuff up wrong when you were trying to access the battery. There's an LED on the controller that can tell you if it's passing or failing at bootup and can blink an error code, but the geniuses at Zero thought it would be hilarious to hide that controller under your motorcycle so that you can't really see the LED and use it as intended.

 Check those things first, as they are more-likely failure points and easier to check. Let me know what you find out so we'll know where to focus, using my Zero as a reference.

 This will be a lot easier than getting the battery out of the Zero was.

[Sarge17]

I had a similar problem a couple days ago on my 2011 S. It was Fully charged, lifted the side stand, no throttle response, cycled the key, kill switch and side stand a few times, and it moved about 100ft and stopped. I found the heavy, blue plastic plug (under the left, rear corner of the battery box) disconnected. I assumed it was supposed to be plugged in? After plugging it in, still no throttle response. I cycled the key, kill switch and side stand a few times and bingo, it worked. Have not had any problems since, I think the heavy plug was the problem and it took a few minutes for the computer to figure out things were back together.

[Richard230]

I had a similar problem a couple days ago on my 2011 S. It was Fully charged, lifted the side stand, no throttle response, cycled the key, kill switch and side stand a few times, and it moved about 100ft and stopped. I found the heavy, blue plastic plug (under the left, rear corner of the battery box) disconnected. I assumed it was supposed to be plugged in? After plugging it in, still no throttle response. I cycled the key, kill switch and side stand a few times and bingo, it worked. Have not had any problems since, I think the heavy plug was the problem and it took a few minutes for the computer to figure out things were back together.

Or it could be that the side-stand safety switch is failing. That is a common problem with a lot of motorcycles, especially the ones that are being built to a budget. 

[milezerozero]

     Chiming in for posterity. I too have a  new-to-me 2011 Zero S, with some intermittent throttle issues. I get the throttle switch blink code most, but not all, times I power the bike on to ride. Occasionally the throttle is initially unresponsive and I cycle the kill switch, rolling the throttle off and on while the kills switch is engaged, which resolves the issue. I have not been stranded yet, and virtually all of my trips are less than three miles. I'm going to start a new thread with some of my questions about replacing the throttle with the five wire Domino, but wanted to be looped into the responses here as well as possibly lean on the experience of everyone here.

Thanks in Advance

[TheAdmiral]

@shreddinPB Did you figure this one out? I am having the exact same issue and my throttle is testing in the right resistance range and controller LED is displaying 'OK' (and worked properly before the battery swap. Battery BMS is reporting OK and charging properly without issue.

Thoughts?

[Richard230]

@shreddinPB Did you figure this one out? I am having the exact same issue and my throttle is testing in the right resistance range and controller LED is displaying 'OK' (and worked properly before the battery swap. Battery BMS is reporting OK and charging properly without issue.

Thoughts?

I had a funky throttle assembly on my very-early-build 2012 ZF9 Zero. It would work most of the time but if I stopped for more than a minute or two with the throttle shut down, but the ignition on, my bike wouldn't move again unless I rebooted my bike. The throttle assembly was replaced by the factory with a new version and I never had another issue like that from then on.  BTW, those were the days when the factory would send a van to my home, pick up my bike, take it to the factory in Santa Cruz and bring it back repaired.   

[zero jim]

Not sure if someone did not mention it, but the 2010 S BMS has a small white plug that locks out the throttle.
I just read this last night while working on mine.
Hope this helps