I last week I rode another 300 miles without a single problem.
The stalling episodes that sgmdudley reported above might not have been the "glitch" but might have been the stalling issue that I had when my bike was new, which was solved with a new throttle assembly. The stalling problem seems to occur when stopped and without any warning or vibration. The "glitch" seems to happen when under way and is accompanied by a weird noise and vibration, resulting in the bike slowing down dramatically, but not completely stalling immediately - stalling comes a few seconds later. The "stalling when stopped" problem can most likely be fixed by the retail dealer. Zero seems to have a handle on that problem, as my bike has not stalled like that since it was repaired 2000 miles ago.
I have that stalling at stoplights issue Richard, but it started happening at the same time as the cutouts at other speeds so I just assumed them to be related. But I see now it might be 2 separate issues if you had the problem and a new throttle assembly fixed it for you. Can you give me the details of the throttle fix? I think I might try to do it to see if it helps. Thanks Richard!
I never really knew exactly what Zero did to fix my first stalling problem. They picked up my bike at my home, took it to the factory and I was told that they replaced the throttle assembly and installed the latest (February version) of their software. They provided no other details. After that everything worked fine until the recall waterproofed BMS board was installed. Immediately after that I started experiencing random stalling.
Now I am having relatively minor issues (so far) with stalling. But this is just a little different than the usual "glitch". I am ready for the feeling like the motor is fighting itself. When that happened once, I had enough warning to pull over to the side of the road to re-boot. But these last two stalling events both occurred immediately after the ignition had been turned on and without any warning. My previous stalling problem occurred during the middle of my ride when I had been sitting at a stop light for a couple of minutes. In those two cases, the throttle would just not work. The current problem results in the throttle working for a couple of seconds before stalling and occurred only immediately after a boot-up.
I have always been good at discerning failure patterns, but these stalling problems just don't seem to have any pattern that can be reliably predicted. The occurrence of the stalling seems to be random. Trying to make sense of it and predict when it will happen is driving me nuts. It must be a failing component, or one that is receiving some sort of random signal.
Oddly, I had the same problem with my GPR-S. It ran fine for over 1000 miles and then it too started stalling somewhat randomly. This occurred after I had removed all of the batteries and the original BMS and installed individual Mini-BMS boards over each cell. I must have done something wrong when wiring everything back up, as it started to stall every few miles when I came to a stop. When that happened I had to wait for three minutes before the bike would run again for another couple of miles. It seemed to happen (but not every time) when I used the brakes, which also activated the regen. I bought the Sevcon controller programer from Harlan and it told me that the stalling problem was the result of a "contactor fault". Unfortunately, I was never able to track down what was causing the fault and I finally sold the bike. Hopefully, the new owner is smarter than I am (which wouldn't take much) and can fix the problem.
What really worries me is that Zero seems to be struggling finding a solution for the problem. I am sure that they will finally resolve the issue, but having something like this happen to a new product manufactured by a start-up company, can't be good for their bottom line or their development of future improvements to their product line. It also does nothing to bolster the reputation of electric motorcycles. I sure hope Brammo doesn't experience similar problems, but with over 2 years of continual development of the Empulse model, I would assume that is less likely.
All in all, I just want this stalling issue to go away so that I can get back to riding without any worries and so that Zero can get back to selling reliable electric motorcycles and developing new ones.
