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[LiveandLetDrive]

I haven't been able to find anything online, nor here.  Lots of car battery teardowns though.

Tl; dr: went to top off one of my packs and found it dead and bloated, considering teardown before recycling.

I bought my '13 FX pretty early, taking delivery in October of that year (VIN ends in 0197, not sure if that makes mine the 197th, 97th, or indeterminate), and bought 2 spare packs at the same time.  In 2015 I yardsaled the bike pretty hard at Hollister, bending a fork and shattering the dash (and the key cylinder, fortunately it stayed in "ON"!)  Limping back several miles with a locked up fork (and a very sore leg and mouth) was less than fun!  I had a few other issues with bent body mounts and broken (nonstructural) welds, so I decided to tear it all the way down and make a project of it.  Of course then three years went by and it's still in a series of Rubbermaid bins!  Still planning to build it into something, original plan was a cafe racer, current aspiration is to see if I can cram it into a proper dirt bike frame, though other uses have occured to me.  Lots of potentially interesting uses for a portable 44HP motor with 10 (now 7.5) kWh of juice...

Since then I've given all the packs a charge with my two 1kW offboard chargers every four months or so.  Yesterday I did the same and found one of them made the charger give an error.  Verified it wasn't a charger problem and then noticed one of the large flat sides was visibly bulging!  Glad Zero uses conservative battery chemistry as these were stored in my very flammable workshop under the house all this time!  It's now sitting outside on gravel just in case.  So poof, there went $2500.  Definitely outside warranty at this point of course.  It's SOP for me to tear down anything before I trash it (whether it's a remote control, deskjet printer, ) to either find the failure or just learn how it works, so I'm planning the same for this.  Haven't looked into battery recycling options yet, whether through Zero or otherwise.  Any idea whether Zero or others would refuse to accept a battery that's been opened?

Are there any publicly visible teardowns of this battery pack that I failed to find?  If not, that tilts me hard towards doing it and sharing the results.  If so I might do it anyway to see if there's any interesting bits to play with, and potentially learn something from fiddling with the BMS that could be applied to my good packs for my future project.  I work for an EV OEM so I have access to good advice and a discharge box, and know enough to ziptie my wrist to my back belt loop...

In other news I have a bunch of FX parts to sell.  Haven't gone to the trouble of listing anything yet, but I have a good stock rear shock, and upgraded one, and the upgraded fork internals may be salvagable.  Good wheels (stock and Hollywood SM upgrade w/ brake spacer), seat, some bodywork, etc.  Keeping all the electronics.  I'll list all this up one of these days.

[BrianTRice@gmail.com]

I would like to know what recycling or other materials recovery programs are available if you can investigate.

If you can perform a professionally safeguarded teardown of the battery pack (and I would absolutely discourage most owners from doing so without consulting a professional), I would like to see the results to incorporate into the unofficial service manual.

The BMS, connections, and some technology in the battery won't match newer models, but they will provide a good reference point for that year at least and a comparison for knowledge acquired for later years.

[mrwilsn]

Not yet but I have two bricked batteries in my garage that I plan to tear down.....at some point.

If you are going to tear down I would do it soon. 2013 batteries used a potting that corrodes the cell membrane and can result in a fire. They were recalled.....at least I'm pretty sure it was MY2013....I'm sure others can confirm.

I would put your second brick outside with the one that won't take a charge.

Even though it's out of warranty you may be able to get replacements from Zero due to the recall....of course you should try that before you tear down.

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk

[LiveandLetDrive]

Hmm, all I can find is a recall early in the year and no mention of potting-caused corrosion.  I think my first step will be an email to Zero with all my packs' SNs to see if they're covered by any recalls that I wasn't notified of, and if they'll replace the bloated pack.  Sadly I'd have to take a free pack over the project of tearing it down if they do offer!

http://recalltsb.com/2013/ZERO/FX

Now that I think about it, I think they had been delivering FXs early in 2013 and they were temporarily not delivering when I ordered because of that very recall.  (So I doubt it covers me unless there was another.)

[Erasmo]

Might be a good idea to contact Zero about it, they could be interested in the bulged pack to do their own teardown to see if it might have been a design/manufacturing error.

Or perhaps you still got one of the packs that should have been recalled.