ElectricMotorcycleForum.com
Makes And Models => Zero Motorcycles Forum | 2013+ => Topic started by: bumblebee on June 09, 2013, 07:58:28 AM
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;D I am a new 2013 Zero S owner.
So far I have adjusted the suspension to my liking and rolled back the handle bars.
Noticed vibration at high speeds and took the front wheel off to get it balance.
Rides beautiful now. My big question is shouldn't the wheels come from the factory or dealership be balanced ?
Also when reading the manual it points out that the bottom nut on front forks is a locking nut and the center screw is used to adjust compression speed. Don't loosen this nut! To adjust suspension compression speed just turn screw valve the required clicks from closed position. This locking nut holds the internal dampener in position. If you do it may not tighten again and it will cost you 113 dollars to pay a mechanics time to insert something in the top of the fork to get that nut tight again.
Also lost power to turn signal, lamp and electronic display. Came home and found fuse for dc to dc converter had pitted ends. Did a light sand on the fuse connecter and reinstalled. No issues now.
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Both my wheels have weights on them so I know the tires have been balanced. Some dealers only balance the rear tire I've heard, but at least in my case, both tires have been balanced and it rides well at high speeds. Zero, like most motorcyle manufacturers uses the weights that are stuck on with adhesive rather than metal clamps so it is possible one or more fell off, but if it did you could see some of the adhesive still on the wheel most likely. I had this happen to a front weight on my 2011 S.
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The wheels on my 2012 S do not have any weights, but I don 't notice any vibrations while riding.
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The problems I had on my 2013 Zero S so far is faulty bulb in the turn signal back, rear shock absorber was makng a high "crack" sound and I found out that it was a error in the top bushings, there was to much play between the brushings and the shock absorber.
I mounted some small metal plates between the brushings and the absorber and now the "clonking/cracking" sound is gone.
The sound was produced when I was moving the bike and using the suspension.
I like the easy removal of the seat, only 2 umbraco screws in the sides :)
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[corrected. I have an 2013, not 2012 as originally indicated]
Had my first issue today, after 500 miles/2 weeks
After an easy 2 miles to get to the highway, I merged in with max power.
The power suddenly cut out, with the speedometer reading 79 when I looked down.
(probably 72 for real speed).
Had to coast to the breakdown lane.
No reaction to throttle. Battery was 7/11.
Fortunately a simple 'reboot' by switching off and back on brought the power back.
Had me worried there!
The range for my 2013-S 8.5 at speed is a less than I expected a seems to get worse.
Will need to quantify.
I had hoped I could just do a full commute at speed (3 slow, 27 fast each way)
I find I use 7 - 8 bars, not 6 each way.
Admittedly going with the flow here is more than 65mph, well over the official 55 MPH limit
The good news is that I can re-charge at the office.
Cheers,
Hein
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1200 miles and not a single problem. The one adjustment that I needed to make was to slow the rebound considerably with trial and error. It took 9 clicks on each fork to get it perfect. I have a good feeling about this bike. Almost every bike I've owned, if there were quirks, they would show up immediately and often stayed unfixed, while bikes that started out problem-free stayed that way a long time. I am not hearing any clicking sounds. I ride hard, so if there is going to be a problem, it is likely to show up sooner rather than later. The Zero S is my new favorite bike. I may just keep this one a while. In addition to the 2-year warranty, I got life-time free tires, brake pads, belt and belt adjustments, and a once a year brake fluid flush, possibly related to the fact I have bought 11 new bikes from af1 Racing in the last 3 years or so. LOL Of course, the 2014's will be out in another 5 months or so and that could change things.
So hein, you have a 2012? If so, that sounds like the glitch some people had with it, that got fixed with new firmware.
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Ouch.
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I can confirm that the glitch is back with 2013. It happened to me twice now. The main contactor opens for no reason. Once was during hard acceleration. The other was during a very slow take off from a stop sign. Both times a recycle of the key switch solved the issue.
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I have not played with the Zero's enough to know what this is but my gut (that I have learned to listen to) is telling me this might have something to do with the DC/DC converter. While I'm a big fan of them I still feel better having a 12v house battery in the loop. Look forward to hearing what the solution is.
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1200 miles and not a single problem. The one adjustment that I needed to make was to slow the rebound considerably with trial and error. It took 9 clicks on each fork to get it perfect. I have a good feeling about this bike. Almost every bike I've owned, if there were quirks, they would show up immediately and often stayed unfixed, while bikes that started out problem-free stayed that way a long time. I am not hearing any clicking sounds. I ride hard, so if there is going to be a problem, it is likely to show up sooner rather than later. The Zero S is my new favorite bike. I may just keep this one a while. In addition to the 2-year warranty, I got life-time free tires, brake pads, belt and belt adjustments, and a once a year brake fluid flush, possibly related to the fact I have bought 11 new bikes from af1 Racing in the last 3 years or so. LOL Of course, the 2014's will be out in another 5 months or so and that could change things.
So hein, you have a 2012? If so, that sounds like the glitch some people had with it, that got fixed with new firmware.
I've had the same experiene as you. Had a 2011 S for a year and 1000s of miles without a single issue. Then got a 2012 S and have 3000 mi with no issues. Had the firmware upgrade done after Zero sent me a notice. Dealer picked it up, did the upgrade, returned it 2 days later. When I saw how much Zero changed the bike for 2013 I got nervous about upgrading again. Sorry to see Zero owners having issues. If Zero is shipping as many as they claim then maybe they are also having manufaturing scaling problems. Maybe they'll get all the bugs ironed out in the 2014 model year.
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I bought a 2013 11.4 Zero S about a month ago and am absolutely in love with it. Within the last month though, I have experienced a couple weird problems. First problem (that I have seen 3 times now) is immediately after the bike completes it's startup sequence, there is no battery level indication and no throttle response. Turning the key off and back on again fixes this. The second more troubling issue (happened twice in the same day) is the bike stopped charging and had the red warning light flashing. This happened the first and only day I ran the battery down to less than 10% capacity. It charged to about 30% and stopped. I then unplugged it, waited about 10-15 seconds, plugged back in and it started charging. About 3-4 hours later, I check the bike and it had stopped charging, warning light flashing. This time it made to about 65% charged. Unplugged then plugged back in, all fine now. The bluetooth app did not show any warning messages from the bike each time this happened. I am nearly at 1000 miles in my first month!
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I have also seen the red warning light get on when charging, but I found out that it was because the bike was moving a little when the charging began.
If the bike is standing completly still when conneting the charger there is no problems.
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I have also seen the red warning light get on when charging, but I found out that it was because the bike was moving a little when the charging began.
Plugging in on the fly. Now that's a good trick!
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I figured I'd join and comment as I am a recent owner of a 2013 11.4 DS. I too had experienced a few "charing dropouts" since August 2013 when I bought the bike. I've put about I would go out to start my commute and discover something went wrong during the charge cycle.
I went up to my dealer (Hollywood Electrics) yesterday, and they hooked me up with a new firmware revision (62 I think I heard) that is supposed to resolve this issue. After two trips (1 near full discharge), it did successfully charge up fully over the course of the night. I was going to wait a couple weeks before calling it fully resolved because the "charge dropout" only happened maybe 5% of the time.
This morning I happily found the bike fully charged, but it unfortunately faulted on power-up with a "4 blink, 1 blink" warning code. This code seems to indicate a welded contactor (contact closure without an energized coil), which is a safety check. The bike won't allow driving if this condition occurs - for obvious reasons. After speaking with a rep (Chris) and getting some good technical info, Zero and Hollywood Electrics are taking care of it under warranty. I might try to bump the contactor to attempt to free it up. Due to the fact that the firmware was updated the previous day I am not entirely convinced it is not being caused by the firmware update itself. The Zero rep informed me that there is some precharging functions built into the firmware to minimize arcing on contact closure, and that they have been pursuing similar issues as mine. They did hint that similar protections may need to be implemented on contact opening as well. I expect it will be resolved soon, as both Zero and HE have taken good care of me so far.
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Welcome to the forum, dmiles.
Glad Harlan & co are taking good care of you. Keep us updated on the contactor issue.
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This morning I happily found the bike fully charged, but it unfortunately faulted on power-up with a "4 blink, 1 blink" warning code. This code seems to indicate a welded contactor (contact closure without an energized coil), which is a safety check. The bike won't allow driving if this condition occurs - for obvious reasons. After speaking with a rep (Chris) and getting some good technical info, Zero and Hollywood Electrics are taking care of it under warranty. I might try to bump the contactor to attempt to free it up. Due to the fact that the firmware was updated the previous day I am not entirely convinced it is not being caused by the firmware update itself. The Zero rep informed me that there is some precharging functions built into the firmware to minimize arcing on contact closure, and that they have been pursuing similar issues as mine. They did hint that similar protections may need to be implemented on contact opening as well. I expect it will be resolved soon, as both Zero and HE have taken good care of me so far.
A few gentle taps is all it took to free mine up. However, Zero doesn't want customers opening that black box where the contactor is located because of the high voltage. They ended up replacing my contactor and updating the firmware. I was told that new controller firmware could also help prevent the issue but I haven't heard any news on new controller firmware.
I'm anxiously awaiting it because my bike still has the "glitch" where all throttle response is lost until the bike is rebooted. I was told the new controller firmware will fix that also. It's not that big of a deal but it's happened to me 8 times now since I got the bike. All it takes is a reboot to clear the error but it still is annoying when you're at a traffic light and it turns green and you realise that your electric motorcycle just stalled out and now you have to hold up traffic for a few seconds while the bike precharges again.
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Dan, mine has done this 3 times now, always in the morning and always after I initially boot up to turn the bike on....no throttle response. Reboot and it's good to go. It has never stopped at a traffic light and had to be rebooted once it was running. That would be a whole different ballgame and dangerous. It would be like a stall and you could get rear-ended. The way mine stands now it is more comparable to an ice bike not always starting the first time. So yours actually stops while you are on the road and not just when you first boot it up?
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Dan, mine has done this 3 times now, always in the morning and always after I initially boot up to turn the bike on....no throttle response. Reboot and it's good to go. It has never stopped at a traffic light and had to be rebooted once it was running. That would be a whole different ballgame and dangerous. It would be like a stall and you could get rear-ended. The way mine stands now it is more comparable to an ice bike not always starting the first time. So yours actually stops while you are on the road and not just when you first boot it up?
I've had it happen in every scenario. Three of the times was when I turned on the bike; there was no throttle response right from the beginning. Two of the times were during hard acceleration; it just cut out and I had to reboot the bike while coasting (these were actually the most dangerous because they both happened at night so that meant I was coasting at about 30mph with no headlight or tail light for ~8 seconds while the bike restarted) Both of those times there was no good place to pull over and there was no one behind me so I figured it would be safer and quicker to reboot it while coasting. The other three times were at traffic lights. I twist the throttle when the light turns green and got no response. Once again, two of those were at night and recycling the key switch is very unsettling because it means no headlight or taillight for a few seconds with the bike restarts.
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As I have previously mentioned, my bike had the morning "no throttle response" glitch, which started immediately after the factory installed the new "wandering encoder fix" firmware last summer. Over 50% of the time, upon the first start-up in the morning, the throttle would not move the bike, but once "re-booted" it would run fine for the rest of the day. This occurred for about a year and then this summer, it started happening less and less frequently and finally I have not had the problem for the past 3 or 4 months. It went away all by itself. I guess I will never understand what electrons are doing from one day to the next. ??? Electronics are just not like mechanical devices.
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That's encouraging Richard. I can certainly live with an occasional morning reboot and as long as it doesn't quit on me while riding I won't worry about it. I recently acquired 2 more bikes so my Zero is not getting the miles it did a month ago, although I do have over 4100 miles on it, so it does get ridden a little every day or two year around. I have two other extremely economical bikes...a Honda Grom that gets 111 mpg and is a blast to ride, goes 64 mph tops and is legal on Texas but not Cali freeways...you just stay in the right-hand lane, and my neighbor recently GAVE me his 2006 Honda Met scooter with 972 miles on it. Starting out free is a good way to get the cost per mile down immediately. It is fine for around town and gets about 100 mpg with a top speed of 40 mph.