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[shaleh]

Hey all, I posted on the Zero Facebook group earlier, thought asking here for more guidance would be a good idea.

I purchased the 2.5 diginows during the Indiegogo campaign and they arrived in time for a 3 day weekend. Woot!

After I removed the mounting bracket for my side bags and the passenger foot peg, removing AC inlet was much easier. Popping the DC inlet Anderson was not too hard. Disconnecting the controller in the middle was easy. 14 screws later the charger was off. Yay. That was Sunday afternoon. I then attached the diginows so I could do a dry run. The bike showed 100% charged and all looked ok. I saw a little sparking/sizzling from the small wire coming out of the fuse area so I left the bike alone until Monday morning. Monday I ran wires and mounted the new pan with the diginows. This went mostly ok. One of the new screws did not go in well and is now stuck 85% inserted. The silver bit it screws into on the bike now spins when I try to tighten or loosen it. So the new pan is not going anywhere.....

But that is a minor concern. The bike no longer keys on and clicks over for riding. The dash does not activate. If I pull the low power B+ fuse and re-insert it I do get a lit up dash. But it eventually fades out like a flashlight with a dead battery. The green go indicator blinks and never settles. The red triangle flashes 2, then 3, then repeats. The manual says this means there is a "Controller Area Network" aka CANbus error.

I have unplugged all of the diginows and that is not changing anything.

What do I do next? I put tape over the plug that went into the middle of the old charger because I did not see anything to plug it into. Beyond that, all of the other cabling was fairly straightforward. What did I miss? Could I have loosened a cable somewhere by accident when pulling the new wires through? If so, where can I look?

[TEV]

I saw a little sparking/sizzling from the small wire coming out of the fuse area.

What wire are you talking about? I don't know  about  any " small wire" that has to be used for the diginow chargers.  And because you are saying that you are not using the CAN connector, I  will assume that you have the "V3.0 version " that's only connected to the Auxiliary charging port  and controller B+ and B-, and it have a switch to put the bike in charging mode.

[Crissa]

Sizzling is bad.  Always bad.

[Richard230]

Sizzling is bad.  Always bad.

Well, I don't know about that.  My 2014 S with PT always made a sizzling noise while it was charging on the stock charger.   Oddly, my 2018 S with PT does not.   

[Crissa]

After being serviced, at low speed my S makes a sizzling noise now.  Sounds like a misaligned coil.

But in repairs?  This is always bad.

[BrianTRice@gmail.com]

We need a lot more detail about what happened and what you're describing in order to help, unfortunately.

You may have a short to ground which has burned out the DC-DC converter, but it's unclear what small wire or fuse area you're referring to. Perhaps a photo would be helpful.

Best of luck.

[shaleh]

The 12? 14? Gauge wire on top of the B- pole of the controller that leads over to the fuses. With the diginow I received there is a DC output plug that connects to the DC aux input Anderson down by the motor and then a second thick wire with red and black connectors that are support to go on to the controller. One at B+ and one at B-. When you put the bolt back on the stack is supposed to be the small wire I described, the new diginow black connector and the large original Zero connector.

[BrianTRice@gmail.com]

This still isn’t enough information for us to tell you anything reasonable.

Try posting some photos of everything involved.

As a hunch, I think you’ll need a dealer repair and it won’t be under warranty.

[TEV]

The 12? 14? Gauge wire on top of the B- pole of the controller

From the diagram that i got from this forum, it seems that the wire from the controller B- is splitting and going to the throttle  and a connector on the motor.

A suggestion will be to make sure that you didn't forget to connect back a connector that you disconnected when you took the onboard charger out or when you routed the wires going to the controller B+ and B-.

Check all the connectors and make sure that they are plugged in all the way and locked.

Are the tail light and the head light on at any time?
If your dash is powered every time you turn the key on, just for a few seconds, are the lights on too?

Just a wild guess, but if the dash is on every time after cycling the ignition off and back on, maybe a short circuit on the 12V side that is making the DC-DC to shut down? Can someone confirm if the DC-DC will act like that in case of a short circuit?

[Crissa]

I would worry the battery was exhausted and he's getting a minor flicker from it, which would be hurting it pretty bad to turn it on and off.

(That's just my experience with battery storage systems; I have a portable solar for camping and ones for my house.  Often you can get a little bit as the battery is dying and you let it set.)

[TEV]

I would worry the battery was exhausted and he's getting a minor flicker from it, which would be hurting it pretty bad to turn it on and off.

(That's just my experience with battery storage systems; I have a portable solar for camping and ones for my house.  Often you can get a little bit as the battery is dying and you let it set.)

So, your "experience with solar panels " is telling you that a Zero motorcycle battery pack that was at 100% state of charge just discharged itself to zero?
I don't know if you noticed that you already have enough posts to show "full member" in your status. Can you please stop tormenting us?

[BrianTRice@gmail.com]

I would worry the battery was exhausted and he's getting a minor flicker from it, which would be hurting it pretty bad to turn it on and off.

(That's just my experience with battery storage systems; I have a portable solar for camping and ones for my house.  Often you can get a little bit as the battery is dying and you let it set.)

So, your "experience with solar panels " is telling you that a Zero motorcycle battery pack that was at 100% state of charge just discharged itself to zero?
I don't know if you noticed that you already have enough posts to show "full member" in your status. Can you please stop tormenting us?

I agree that a full discharge is not a reasonable interpretation; much better to ask to confirm SoC or terminal voltage via voltmeter when in doubt.

A full discharge of a Zero pack in a short time would be very noticeable, basically as a catastrophic fire. I think we’re looking at a disconnected ground that sparked or arced as it touched frame or something. Not good, but not a fire.

Also, we don’t have enough information and are throwing out (informed) guesses, myself included. Let’s be careful not to get this owner into further trouble.

[Crissa]

...Because I've full discharged many batteries due to a short.  As long as there's some resistance, it won't catch on fire (and that's usually making a sizzle sound, carbon is a resistor, and burned insulator becomes carbon).

He also said he left it sitting.

And he's not measured the voltage at the battery taps since.

-Crissa

[BrianTRice@gmail.com]

Don’t cloud interpretations with the worst case scenario, though. Just ask people to measure.

[Shadow]

DC-DC converter going into shutdown makes a lot of sense.

Note I'm not an actual Hero, posting counts are a whimsical mechanism of the forum to encourage participation. Having an argument over posting counts is off-topic.

I've heard sizziling (with accompanying magic smoke and brief fire) when the fan output lines on the DigiNow charging modules become shorted by a blocked fan. There is an internal fuse on those charging modules that is not serviceble.

Hope it's just the DC-DC going into overload protection. Let us know!