Do Zero still recommend setting the "sag" on the rear?
Maybe the dealer should have brought your attention to the fact that you have the ability to dial the bike in for your own weight by adjusting the preload of the rear spring so it is in the optimum range of travel for the riders weight. This is standard procedure for most Motocross bikes.
My dealer didn't discuss setting up the suspension for my weight, but the owner's manual goes over that process in some detail. You just need time and a helper to do the job. In the meantime, the suspension seems to be working OK, at least in the garage. I am not sure what is going on at high speeds, though. When riding over 50 mph on bumpy back roads, I was experiencing some wiggling in the bars when corning that was making me kind of nervous. I am hoping I can dial that out with suspension adjustments, but the suspension is pretty complicated and it would be easy to make thing worse by just turning dials randomly. I just haven't had the time to fool with it. However, the handling is fine around town, it is just not very stable in the woods. Perhaps the bike's light weight and short wheelbase reduces its stability, compared to my BMWs, my Triumph and my FZ1, all of which weigh around 500 pounds and have conservative chassis geometry. I should also mention that my Suzuki SV650 also feels nervous to me under the same conditions, so maybe I am just not used to the quick handling of a supermoto-style bike.
Finally, the bike comes with IRC Road Winner tires and those are not exactly top-of-the-line rubber. It has also been my experience that adjusting the air pressure a pound or two plus or minus can make a big difference with tubeless tires on lightweight bikes.
Moving on to charging: Yesterday I arrived home from my ride having used approximately half of the battery pack capacity according to the "fuel" gauge. That should be about 4 kWh, assuming that the pack has a usable capacity of 7.2 kWh (80% of 9kWh). The on-board 110V charger (charging at a maximum input of 950 watts according to my Kill A Watt), took almost exactly 6 hours to complete bulk charging. That would seem to indicate that a full charge would require 12 hours, instead of the 9 hours claimed in Zero's specifications. That might mean that the battery pack has a slightly greater capacity than rated, or that the charger efficiency is lower than expected, or the "fuel" gauge is not quite accurate, or.....? Balancing/trickle charging sucked up another 0.12 kWh during the next 12 hours after bulk charging was completed.
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Topic: 2012 reviews? (Read 9078 times)