ElectricMotorcycleForum.com
Makes And Models => Zero Motorcycles Forum | 2013+ => Topic started by: oobflyer on July 03, 2015, 12:01:34 AM
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I'm leaving tomorrow morning for my "Big" ride to Hollister. It will be over 200 miles roundtrip, not including the 100-mile-ride with Terry Hershner on Saturday.
I'll be charging in Patterson, Gilroy, and Pleasanton - it should be fun - I'll post some pictures here and on the facebook page later this weekend.
Happy 4th of July everyone!
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I'm in the area trying to move to Oakland. I'll have a V-Strom over the 3-day weekend in case you'd like to meet.
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Are you lugging dual Elcons and the j1771 adapter or something else?
Cheers
--G
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I'm in the area trying to move to Oakland. I'll have a V-Strom over the 3-day weekend in case you'd like to meet.
I'll be meeting Terry Hershner at the Corbin Seat Factory in Hollister at 9AM on Saturday, July 4th - be there!
Are you lugging dual Elcons and the j1771 adapter or something else?
I have three of the Delta-Q off-board chargers from Zero and the J1772 Quad adapter from Hollywood Electrics. I can charge at 4 kW/40A - so from empty it would only take only a couple of hours to charge. Not quite as fast as the Elcon setup, but not bad.
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Oobflyer,
Do you keep the chargers all spread out no the ground while charging? Do you baby-sit them so no one messes with your setup the entire time?
About to be doing similar trips soon once my hardware comes in and I'm just curious/paranoid.
Steven
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I'm in the area trying to move to Oakland. I'll have a V-Strom over the 3-day weekend in case you'd like to meet.
I'll be meeting Terry Hershner at the Corbin Seat Factory in Hollister at 9AM on Saturday, July 4th - be there!
Sounds cool, but it looks like I'm headed east this morning with friends. I did look around at Alice's yesterday between a Skyline ride and 1. I'll catch up soon!
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I started off early Friday morning and headed from Stockton to Patterson. I arrived in Patterson with 50% charge on my bike and plugged in.
For a few minutes it seemed like it was all good, but then things started to go bad....
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After charging about 10% the charging just stopped. I tried unplugging and re-plugging the chargers without success. I tried restarting the charging station, I reset the BMS, I cycled the bike on and off...
I was just about to give up and turn around and head home when the charging finally started and continued - until I had 100%.
This Tesla pulled in next to me while I was charging.
I decided to risk it and continue on to Gilroy (about 20 miles from Holister).
I made it to the motel with 30% charge left, but...
The bike was "dead". I checked into the motel with the intention of riding to a J1772 station a couple of miles away, but the bike wouldn't engage the motor. Error #56 - "monolith disconnected".
I got permission to plug the bike in at the motel and I decided to walk to the J1772 charging station while calling for help - the charging station is at the Gilroy Outlet stores - just next to a Tesla Supercharger station. There were so many Teslas that one of them had to use the J1772 charger.
While I was walking and talking on the phone - I got a message from Terry Hershner (thanks Terry!) who saw my post on Facebook. He was able to find someone at Zero to look at my bike logs.
When I got back to the motel a couple of hours later there was good news and bad. I tried turning my bike on - and it worked! The error #56 was gone, the motor engaged - I was able to ride again. There was (and still is) error #49 ("contactor open disable"), but at least I was no longer stuck at the motel without a ride.
Now I had to decide whether to ride to Hollister in the morning, or just try to make it back home....
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After talking to Terry Herschner (after he talked to the Zero tech) I decided to risk it. I rode to Hollister where I met Terry and another Zero owner, Doug. We were all able to plug in in preparation for the "Vetter Fuel Challenge Ride" at a J1772 station at the Corbin Factory. The older gentleman in the photo is Craig Vetter - the gentleman on the right is Doug.
We took off with the extreme aerodynamic bikes (and a variety of other bikes) and ride 70 miles round-trip from Hollister to Santa Nella.
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We plugged in after arriving back at Corbin - my bike charged up normally. I even added one of Terry's chargers to my three to charge at 5 kW (well, almost).
With an hour or so to kill I had the opportunity to check out all of the interesting bikes, tour the factory, and talk to some interesting folks.
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Lightening was there! But no test-rides :(
I headed home after charging to 100% again, stopping by the San Louis Reservoir on Hwy 152.
I stopped again in Patterson to charge for an hour at 4 kW before heading home.
I didn't have any more problems with my bike, but I have to take it back to the dealership to see what happened and to make sure it doesn't happen again.
I also posted a short video from this weekend - check it out on YouTube:
https://youtu.be/veVrv1UuQqI
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Great write up, thanks for all the nitty-gritty details!
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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Yeah, appreciate the good and the bad. Monolith disconnected sounds like a 2001-grade error. Hopefully they are able to diagnose it rapidly!
Cheers
--G
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I agree. That was a very interesting trip story. Thanks for the writeup. Looking at your charging photos, it is amazing that someone doesn't trip over all of those wires. :)
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Thanks for the story - looked like a fun adventure. :)
Curious about the outcome of your error 49. How was it fixed? Or?
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In other news: I happened to see Doug this morning at Alice's Restaurant. He rode in to the Skylonda shopping center parking lot just as I was leaving on my BMW with a friend to go for a ride along the sunny 8) coast. It is a small world. :)
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Curious about the outcome of your error 49. How was it fixed?
The error codes #25 ("Contactor Open Warning") and #49 ("Contactor Open Disable") are on the dash display each time I power up.
Normally I don't have my dash set up to display the error codes so I don't know exactly how long there have been problems. According to the tech at Zero the bike logs showed that there have been something wrong for a month or so (I had no idea). Someone else on the forum mentioned that the bike log error messages can keep piling up until there is no more memory - I guess that's when the bike actually stops running (what was that comment about aviation? ;))
I'll probably leave the dash set to display the error codes from now on.
I'll contact Zero tomorrow (if they don't call me first). Hopefully I'll know more soon.
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Yep, that's me! What a terrific weekend we (me, my brother and his wife) had. I'm near San Diego (El Cajon to be exact) and I decided to trailer my bike up, and my brother and his wife (proud owners of a heavyweight Yamaha ICE bike) went up with me. I learned to ride in Santa Cruz at the age of 12 (omg.....41 years ago now) and have been itching to get my bike in the Santa Cruz mountains since I received it in January 2014. It was a fantastic decision.
Okay, so I didn't quite complete the ride. But doesn't somebody have to define the tail end of the envelope? For the record: me (weight disadvantage) and my bike (windshield advantage, 11.4 2014 battery disadvantage to the 2015 12.5s AND their power tanks) didn't quite make it to the end of the ride. Instead, I got to meet a friendly handyman at Casa de Fruta (Google it) who let me recharge for an hour to get home, and got to cuss out Craig Vetter, who promised a 75-mile ride but delivered better than 80 by my odometer. I MIGHT have been able to limp home; I had 7% remaining with 7.2 miles indicating on Google maps, but limping home at 30 mph on the freeway seemed ill-advised at best.
Also for the record, my bike has yet to fail to get me home, in 16,000 miles now, except on this ride when I failed IT (I asked too much of it, plain and simple...I could and should have turned around before the midpoint). It did fail to "start" once due to water infiltration, and it failed to charge once due to the onboard charger failing.
I got home two hours ago after 13 hours on the road (lots of road work causing hours of delay!), and I unloaded the bike and hopped on it to make sure everything was good. I wound up taking a half-hour ride just because I could. It's that kind of bike, it's that kind of experience, it's that kind of lifestyle.
It was a wonderful chance to meet Craig Vetter, Mike Corbin, Dave and Terry, and everybody else. I can't stand the thought of going to work tomorrow. Deep sigh.