Well, I got it too!!!!
.
Today, milage 1,435. Air temp 88, Garage temp mid 90's. Started out of the alley and turned
right onto a 4 lane street in my hometown of Longmont, CO. Died. While coasting to a stop I
rebooted. I was trying to keep up with a friend who was on his BMer. For the next mile to the
next stop light intersection it ran a little ragged. Waited at the light for a few minutes then when
I got the green, started to go and it died again before I could even get out of the crosswalk.
Went to the side and turned off the key. Pushed myself back to the lane, waited only half a
minute or so then rebooted. Ran normal the rest of the way to the next town including 75 on
a major highway. I was going to my friends house so he could test drive the Zero (its a S9).
He took a 15 minute ride without a glitch. Then going back home I ran it 10 miles down the
road at 70. I'll be contacting the dealer on Tuesday.
Sgmdudley I went through this thread again and with the large number of new cases of this that have been posted the past few weeks, it looks like about 20 bikes on this forum have had it happen. How many total zero owners do we have that post regularly here? 30 or so? Anyone know? It looks like more than half the bikes have got it already, most with close to 2000 miles. My guess is the others just have less miles or were from an early production run. i know from talking to Jon, matt and Richard at Zero, some of the very first bikes made they have there have close to 25k miles and harlans bike have a lot more miles and never had it. I wonder what changed in production that caused all the later produced bikes to get it? I didn't get mine till late April.
Last week I reperformed a calsincos when hot and it was initally worse. In fact all it would do was go backwards when you applied the throttle until once it tried to go backwards and giving it more throttle and out of nowhere it finally shot forward at full speed almost throwing me off the bike. Went back and did the recalibration it again and it seemed to fix it. However another 50 miles or later and it started to run rough again.
I was able to get an emailed copy of my logs and one of the first things I noticed was my motor controller hits the restriction temp of 70C stage one, and 75C stage 2 almost daily. The motor stage one and 2 restrictions are at 145C and 152C but my motor usually is cooler at around 120C-140C when the controller overheats. The batteries are usually between 35C and 40C with their restrictions begin at 50C stage 1 and 60C stage 2.
At least on my bike the controller is the weak link. I dont know if the heatsink wasn't seated properly or whether something inside is faulty, but with the amount of heat cycles it's hit, even though power fully restricts at 75C the controller temp has crept up to at least 80C, way over its limit. I think it's time to upgrade the controller. Something must be worng with it after going through all these over max allowable temp heat cycles. Example from my logs:
"00238 05/21/2012 09:30:10 High Mot/Ctrl/Pack Temp Mot: 136C, Ctrl: 79C, Pack: 40C
00239 05/21/2012 09:30:20 High Mot/Ctrl/Pack Temp Mot: 137C, Ctrl: 80C, Pack: 40C
00240 05/21/2012 09:30:30 High Mot/Ctrl/Pack Temp Mot: 138C, Ctrl: 80C, Pack: 40C
00241 05/21/2012 09:30:40 High Mot/Ctrl/Pack Temp Mot: 137C, Ctrl: 79C, Pack: 40C"
Simply from a safety standpoint. I tried to let zero figure out what it is with the encoder, but I never seem to hear back from them without repeated calling, and I just can't keep riding with these cutouts without actively trying new things to fix it. One of these days cutting out with a semi truck too close behind me and I'm gonna get it while trying to fiddle with the key and him texting and driving out of the corner of his eye. Warranty voided or not, from a safety standpoint I feel I have no other choice. Pretty sure legally any lawyer, judge or jury would say after 6000 of the almost 9000 miles total I have, I waited a reasonable amount of time to allow them to tell my closest dealer what to do to fix it. Although again it looks like the underzised controller is at least part of the problem as the data clearly indicates it is constantly stressed to it's limit and the issue is no doubt the ability for the controller to sense the correct position of the motor. All the software upgrades and calibrations aren't doing it. Time to replace one or both of the remaining components. I probably should have done this a long time ago.
What sucks is 99% of the time it runs great, enough so that I gamble with it on each ride that it might be ok this time, but then when it happens, it happens a lot. I don't know how to replace the encoder, if I did I'd do it, but I feel comfortable installing an upgraded controller, especially since my logs show absolute proof my damn size 4 controller sits at between 70 degrees C and 75C the majority of it's life, and that it's maximum happy limit. It other words it's probably rather unhappy and potentially the source of my safety issues. Logically knowing what I now know, if I didn't inform someone who was riding a bike that was cutting out all the time that their controller was undersized and perhaps faulty from heat damage, I could be considered negligent. But since it is me, I feel the only prudent thing to do to protect myself is to do the logical thing and replace the weakest known link in the system and hope for the best.
Sorry for the rant, ususally pretty happy at 6 in the morning, especially on a day off. I wanted to go riding this morning, but realized I better wait for the sun to rise just to be safe if there was a cutout and someone didn't see me. So all I was left to do was get on the conputer and complain, lol. It's almost 7 and starting to get light. Gonna go for a ride. Wish me luck.
p.s. when you get a recalibration done, ask your dealer to email you a copy of your logs, both the main bike board, and BMS. more interesting reading than the sunday comics I promise, and you can put 2 and 2 together as you look at the dates of all your errors and say "oh yeah' I remember the bike cutting out then! Might help us all get to the bottom of this.
