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[trikester]

Yesterday I experienced the first "fail to start" on my 2013 FX. I was all prepared for a Utah dirt ride -turned on the key switch and rolled the throttle, and - nothing. Naturally, I checked my side stand and kill switch, and checked again. All OK there. Then with the sw still on I tried rolling the bike back and forth - still nothing. After cycling the key sw once, the throttle became active, then the bike worked flawlessly the rest of the day.

I have to say it did make me a little nervous when I turned it off to eat my sack lunch and enjoy a fantastic view from the top of the Kaiparowits Plateau. This was a long, lonely, way from any assistance, had I needed it. However, the bike started without any hesitation when I was ready to ride back to Escalante.

Does anybody have any idea what could have caused this?

I thought I had left starting difficulties behind when I switched from ICE to electric.

Trikester

[BSDThw]

Hi Trikester, my Dealer gave this message from Zero to me when we did the SW Update at the 2012 so it will still be the same SW Version at the 2013!

Please note that we have seen a few instances where it takes slightly longer for the bike to turn on with this
new firmware. This is due to a change in the pre-charge algorithm in the firmware. Also there have been a
couple times where turning the key on has a pre-charge fault and the bike doesn’t go even after waiting about
5 seconds. Turning the key off and back on again has always cleared this problem.

So it should not become a big thing hope fully.

[Richard230]

I have the same problem with my 2012 S, except it happens to me about 75% of the time, but only during the first start in the morning. When I visited the Zero factory in December, I asked about this problem and was told that a very small percentage of bikes that had the Sevcon firmware update to correct the encoder issue got stuck with this minor "glitch". There was no indication that Zero planned to investigate the problem further.  I might add that I can wait for several minutes and the throttle will not activate, unless I first re-boot the ignition switch, at which time it always will take off. 

When this happens there is no warning indicator noted and I have tried every combination of starting that I can think of, such as stand down, stand up, sport mode, eco mode, pulling the charger hours before I ride, pulling it right before I ride, moving the bike back and forth, etc. - nothing seems to affect the lack of throttle response.  But - I can always tell when the throttle will not work as I will not hear the contactor switch "click".  If it clicks, the bike will start.  If I do not hear a click upon turning on the ignition key, the throttle will not function.   

[BSDThw]

Zero can not fix it it has to be done by Secvon.

When you turn your key the Sevcon get power, but only for the "let me say low-power" controller part and not for the switching power part. there are a certain amount of capacitors and you can't connect the battery "hard", therefore the system will switch / pump the capacitors to a level equal to the battery and then the main relay will be safely closed. (you can hear it clicking) (Can you take care next time if I am right, your relay should not have done a click when the Zero get this fault )

It seams that software part has a glitch at this point, therefore I believe if it runes once you will not have a problem as long as the system it powered up.
The second try after a fail has the advantage that the capacitor is pre charged now .

[trikester]

Thanks everyone. It sounds like I can expect this to happen every once in awhile, but that everything will be OK after I cycle the switch. That is the experience that I had, so I'm not going to worry about it again. However, it would be embarrassing to hand the bike to someone to try out, and then it didn't go.

Trikester

[BSDThw]

You are right, it's not what we like to show our friends.

Even more dangerous if you have to cycle power off/on during driving "like we had to do at the first glitch"!

Lets pray the glitch 2.0 is just some defect of contact, wear and tear ...

[trikester]

I guess when I go to turn the key, I'll cross my fingers from no on.

Trikester