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[dkw12002]

Texas summer is becoming brutal. Over 100 F today. I don't ride in the daytime in these temps, but I often ride in the mornings and late afternoon when the sun is low. Still my motor and battery become hot especially if I ride at freeway speeds which is often. This concerns me. What I have been doing is using a floor fan to cool off the motor and battery by pointing it toward the motor from the rear right of the bike. It cools off the motor and battery quickly. After about 10 min, I plug in the charger and continue to cool the battery with the fan through the charging cycle from 30 min. to 6 hours. Otherwise it can get very hot. Anyone else using fans or some other method to cool off your bikes? Has anyone got their bike so hot that it shut down or nearly down on you? So far I have seen the flashing red temp icon twice and slowed down immediately with no automatic safeguards kicking in. Has anyone burned out a motor or suspected heat damage to the battery pack?

[motoxo]

i've been just letting my bike sit for a few hours and then i go out and plug it in for an evening charge up. it never goes more than 24 hours without it being topped off. since zero watches this forum, i hope they chime in on a best practices as i think the best solution is just to use it, plug it in when you can and fix anything that goes wrong with it.

[dkw12002]

I burned the motor out on my 2011 S in the summer. It wasn't over 90F and I had just started out, but it does concern me. Different motor of course in the 2013. Then Brammo does have water cooling for their Empulse r, so obviously heat is a concern. Zero says in their info that there are built-in safeguards to protect the battery and motor from over-heating, but I did have that one time that the motor and battery were very hot, I charged a couple hours and when I unplugged from the charger to run an errand, the red flashing warning system indicator stayed on until even after a couple of reboots and stayed on until after the bike cooled off while I shopped and was not present during the reboot for the return trip. Whether that was due to high heat or not I can't say. I haven't had any warning lights since, but I do cool it off with the fan. Thing is, I have one fan and two sides to the bike, so I assume I am cooling off one side of the battery but not the other so much, at least not evenly, so the only thing I know for sure is that the fan does cool off the motor pretty fast. Anyway, I don't mind and if it does help, it is no trouble. I couldn't be hurting anything with the fan, right? It's still 95F in my garage the hottest part of the day after my evening ride so I am just blowing hot air....so to speak.

[Lipo423]

Yep, "relatively" high temperatures is something Lithium batteries like (in de-charging mode), but they do not like to be charged when hot 
The passive cooling system in the 2013 models is a very good propaganda, and looks very nice, but higher performance come at a price...the 2012 motor has reasonable cooling, but if you push it too much you reach high temps very quickly -and the thermal protection goes off

Do not need to mention that your battery pack has a priority over your motor when trying to cool down.

[Richard230]

I don't have this problem (rarely seeing temperatures over 65 degrees), but it seems to me that aiming a small box fan at the bike should help some as mentioned by DKW12002.  Also I wonder if a water mister would help cool things down?  It works for children.   

[trikester]

I have noticed on my 2013 FX that the motor cools vary fast when i stop riding. It doesn't store and hold a lot of heat. That's a good thing.

Trikester

[aaronzeromoto]

I am not sure which model we are discussing, but the best answers regarding charging and temperature limitations can be found in the Owner's Manuals.  They are online if you need another copy:

http://www.zeromotorcycles.com/owner-resources/

In the S/DS manual check out page 4.13 for info on the temp indicator and 6.9 for hot weather recommendations.

I don't think a fan will hurt anything, but I would NOT want to blow water mist on my ICE bike or my Zero. 

I can tell you that despite my best efforts I have not been able to get my Zero DS to shut down.    I like riding with my battery and motor temp displayed on the Riding Screen of our Zero Moto app to see the temperatures reported by these components.

Regards,
aaronzeromoto

[NoiseBoy]

I thought the general consensus was that the controller was the thermal weak link?  In which case try directing the fan at the heatsink.

[dkw12002]

After a 12-mile ride this evening in only 84 F sun-down conditions, I pointed the floor fan at my 2013 S motor a couple minutes although it was not very hot, plugged it into the charger, but got the #1 green and #4 red power pack too hot code. A half hour of fan cooling directed at the battery got the temp down and the pack is charging. I normally feel the battery at the same time I feel the motor, and it did not feel very warm at all, but internally it must have been a lot hotter. Anyway, all is well. Next time I ride, think I'll direct the fan more to the pack instead of the motor and wait a half hour before trying to charge. Although I did not ride fast this evening..45-55 mph, I did accelerate WOT off the last two traffic signals. I think that is what did it.

[Richard230]

Speaking of motor cooling, can anyone tell me why Zero decided to run the cooling fins along the length of the motor body, instead of radially, where they would allow the wind to flow past them evenly, without the fins or motor body in front of the motor blocking the wind from reaching the rear of the motor casing?  The only reason I can think of is that it is easier and cheaper to cast the fins that way and perhaps it makes the motor casing stronger and lighter than if it had radial cooling fins.

[WindRider]

My assumption here is that the Zero engineers knew what they were doing and I ride the bike like any other bike.  If it is hot and I am riding I am hoping that Zero engineered the battery pack and motor to take normal heat.

When I get to work I plug it in immediately.   Sometimes it charges out in the sun.  If the batteries are too hot then the BMS should not allow it to charge or if it is marginally hot, the BMS should allow it to charge at a reduced rate.   As I understand it the BMS has all of this logic.   At home I charge after 9 PM to take advantage of lower power costs so it gets a chance to cool down there.

I have only once seen the Temp warning light (2012 ZeroDS) come on and this was at indicated 75 MPH into a headwind, 100 deg F day.  It never shut down or decreased power that I could tell, it just flashed at me for about 3 miles and then when I pulled off the freeway it quit flashing.

Actually, I find the lack of heat quite refreshing on the Zero.   I used to ride Buells and they could bake you on a hot day.

[dkw12002]

My experience so far indicates the overheat icon that flashes on your display is what overheats when you are riding. Someone said it best when they noted the battery likes it hot to discharge, but not to re-charge. Only when you plug the bike in to charge it do you get a warning light that the battery is too hot to be charged. This shows up on the dash display as a blinking red warning light, and you can then look behind the forks to see that the bike is flashing #1 green and #4 red. This won't show up as a code while you are riding I don't think, because what triggers it is trying to recharge from an outlet. I didn't just leave it plugged in at that point, but unplugged it from the charger and cooled the battery down with the fan before plugging the charger back in. If I hadn't unplugged the bike before using the fan, I don't know if the computer would just monitor the temp, then start charging when the temp got down low enough or whether once the overheat code is triggered, the bike will never recharge until you unplug it from the charger and back in to reboot, recycle the flashes and clicks that begin a charging cycle. One thing is obvious. The internal battery temp and probably the motor internal temp as well can be a lot warmer than it feels on the outside....especially the battery pack.

[BSDThw]

can anyone tell me why Zero decided to run the cooling fins along the length of the motor body, instead of radially,

You normally do an "extruded profile" this will not allow to have a shape in an other direction as the extruding line!

On the other side the motor is behind the battery box... not really in the air, so maybe the air swirl will do a good job.

[trikester]

Speaking of motor cooling, can anyone tell me why Zero decided to run the cooling fins along the length of the motor body, instead of radially, where they would allow the wind to flow past them evenly, without the fins or motor body in front of the motor blocking the wind from reaching the rear of the motor casing?  The only reason I can think of is that it is easier and cheaper to cast the fins that way and perhaps it makes the motor casing stronger and lighter than if it had radial cooling fins.

Yes I think it is a matter of extruding the motor body. Radial fins would require casting and be more difficult.

Back when I was working for a power supply company (before starting my own) we tried what we called "pin fins" that were tapered posts (castings) rising above the surface. The idea was that cooling air could come from any direction and eliminate one fin blocking another. Tests never proved the theory and we quit using that design in favor of fins aligned with the known airflow. Zero's fins don't appear to be aligned with the known airflow but turbulence (as BSDThw mentions) could produce flow along the 2013 motor fins and even behind the motor. It would take a smoke trail in a wind tunnel to truly know the flow pattern at the motor in each model of bike. I'm wondering about this on my trike e-conversion and I'm counting on my thick aluminum rear motor mounting plates to carry some heat to the air. I also have the DC - DC converter mounted to those plates.

Trikester

[af1 racing]

your 2011S motor did not fail from excessive heat.

that old motor design had brushes, and the brush holders would randomly fail on them destroying the motor.  We've fixed two other 2011s for the same failure.

UNless you are getting over temp warnings, I would not worry about it