ElectricMotorcycleForum.com

Well, a few days after I got the logs, the check engine light turned off and hasn't turned back on since, so problem solved. I forgot to mention in my last post, I also attached the .log of bluetooth communications between my phone and the bike. Wireshark knows how to parse it. If I ever get time I'll try to reverse engineer the communications so I can pull info off the bike in python, since as far as I can tell no one's yet reverse engineered that and open sourced it.

Good news and bad news. The good news is it's charging and riding fine again. The bad news is the check engine light is on and I can't figure out why or how to get it to turn off.

Getting it charging wasn't too bad. The charging circuit fuse is indicated by the red arrow. Pointing towards the base of the bike, there's a flathead screwdriver slot. Push in and unscrew ~1/4 turn to get the fuse holder out of the body. The fuse holder with fuse, and body, are sketched in an attached picture. I cleaned the contact on the holder, and scraped the mating contact inside the body clean with a small flathead. Then cleaned out the resultant black plastic shavings. After reassembly it worked fine. The fuse itself read *BUSS*ABC10A, which is a different manufacturer than I expected, but no big deal.

Now, the check engine light had come on a few days beforehand when I was downloading logs. I was assuming it would go away after I fixed the charging problem. But a couple weeks after cleaning the fuse contacts, charging to full and load balancing for 12 hours, and riding a few times, it's still there. I don't see much in the logs of any value. There are errors that existed long before the check engine light came on and so I assume aren't responsible, but nothing that seems to have cropped up at the same time as the check engine light. The manual says the check engine light will bring with it a decrease in torque, but I'm still able to get up to at least 75MPH. I suspect it'll go higher, though I haven't been able to test its old top speed of 85MPH, and it doesn't feel sluggish at lower speeds so maybe there's no actual torque reduction.

Logs to follow in the next post as I'm out of attachments

Log files attached. Error messages are generally
- `ERROR: Internal Fault on BMS0`
- `DEBUG: Charge Fault Occured. Sevcon trying to close contactor, but one was not closed quickly enough`
- `Sevcon Turned Off`,
-`Shutting Down. Too many Charge faults`

Which looks like what they ran into this thread https://www.electricmotorcycleforum.com/boards/index.php?topic=12576.0 . That thread is absolutely full of fuse/holder people, which bodes well for me. According to the service manual, it seems like the relevant fuse is High-Voltage Fuse 4 - "Charge Fuse (on-board)", which is "ABC10A". Presumably that's the ABC-10A https://divinelighting.com/products/divine-lighting-abc-10a-fast-blow-ceramic-fuse-10-amp-250v-abc10a-abc10-abc-10a-fast-blow-fuse-also-3ab-ceramic-6mm-1-4-in-x-30mm-1-25-in, a $3 part. Fingers crossed.

Interestingly, I had this failure 6/18 before the current spate, and I got hit by the thunderstorm 6/24. Maybe this has been happening intermittently and didn't get bad until the rain.

Also, while downloading the logs with the charger plugged in, the bike eventually realized there was a problem and turned on the Check Engine light. I didn't see a new error code on the dash, though.

I've had a used 2022 FXE for about two years now, taken it from about 700 to 7000 miles. I've usually been paranoid about riding it in the rain but I finally got caught in a thunderstorm last week. I thought everything was fine and made it home no problem, but I'm finally realizing the thing isn't charging. When I plug it in, the charging light and check engine light glow orange briefly, I hear the contactor close, then I get a very quick green flash on the charging light and eight slow flashes before all LEDs turn off. Disconnecting the charger, I get a quick red System Warning Indicator blink, then the contactor opens.

If I turn the key, the charging time stays at 00:00 and I have error codes 45 (Kickstand Switch Disable) and 47 (MBB Charger Connected Disable). I don't think I've seen anyone make this guess but I think the latter is just the MBB saying "you can't turn the throttle, the bike's plugged into the wall," as opposed to the MBB knowing there's some charger problem. So nothing terribly enlightening.

Collecting a bunch of other threads
https://www.electricmotorcycleforum.com/boards/index.php?topic=10197.0 (fuse/holder)
https://www.electricmotorcycleforum.com/boards/index.php?topic=12576.0 (fuse/holder)
https://www.electricmotorcycleforum.com/boards/index.php?topic=11400.0 (fuse/holder)

from r/ZeroMotorcycles

from r/ZeroMotorcycles

(doesn't look related)

So seems like odds are good the problem is the fuse or fuse holder. Annoyingly, in the first thread, the OP mentioned that the fuse didn't measure as bad with his multimeter, so I guess it's hard to be sure that's the problem. Anyway, I'll try to get logs tomorrow or tonight. I set up an ESP32 as a wifi-serial bridge to use with the OBDII port a couple years ago, but it's been a long time since I've looked at it and it'd require some relearning; is there any information that would be useful to pull from the serial port?

I'll update this thread as the situation evolves. Hopefully it'll be another testimony for the fuse/fuse holder pile that someone will find on google in six months. If anyone has any more info, especially the practical aspects of how to find or replace the fuse on my bike, please do share.

Following up on the serial interface, I realized that there's enough information in https://zeromanual.com/wiki/MBB_Console to get me started. I found an ESP32 library (https://github.com/AlphaLima/ESP32-Serial-Bridge) that will let me use the serial interface over WiFi. So my plan for today was to open up the bike, make sure I can get power from the OBDII connector at least when the bike is on or charging, and maybe test out talking to the mainboard.

But I wasn't able to find the OBDII connector. The wiki (https://zeromanual.com/wiki/OBD-II_Port_Location) says the connector's on the left side of the battery. I can see on my frame the two screw holes where the connector should be mounted

, but there's no trace of it. I took a bunch of pictures, closed my bike up, and have been doing more reading. I've seen some conversations saying there are two ports, one being under the seat with a red or orange cap, and one being down next to the controller behind the rubber gap filler. Is the red/orange-capped one under the seat this?

I'll take the seat back off this week and take a second look, but if anyone knows you might be able to save me some trouble.

Apparently the second connector was added recently with an always-on 12V pin to meet EU regulations. Anyone know which is which? And any advice on how to find the second one? I took a quick look around behind the gap filler but couldn't see anything.

Definitely sounds like that's a good solution. It's not for me as I like to avoid bringing corporate-controlled stuff into my home (Windows, cloud-based services, Alexa, etc.). But it's certainly more cost-effective than what I did.

For whatever reason, my utility doesn't vary their rates by time. That's a good call, though, and I'll delay til off-peak hours just to be a good citizen.

I finally got around to adding some labels to the bar graph of charging/delay progress. Screenshots of the web interface are attached. There's probably not too much more I want to add to the website. But I started looking at a 2016 wiring diagram and it seems like there's no feasible way to get CAN signals out while it's charging without putting the key in. MBB2 runs the OBD connector, and it's not powered unless the motor controller wants to power it. At that point any messing around gets too close to bricking my bike. I have to take off the seat soon anyway, so I'll probably stick a scope on the OBD connector while I'm at it and make sure there's no signal.

Now I'm thinking about measuring the power going to the charger to approximate the SOC. Turns out you can get a current sense IC that sits on the neutral line and outputs a neat analog signal to tell you the current... very little practical benefit, but it'd be fun!

I bought a 2022 FXE in early August with about 500 miles on it. It's been great, but I've found charging to be a bit inconvenient. To keep the battery healthy, I want to let the bike cool off before charging it, and I want to keep the battery at low charge. My commute uses about 35% of the battery, so if I was to charge it every day I'd have to get home, let the bike cool off, go out and plug it in, then come back and unplug it about three and a half hours later. That's a lot of trips out to my shed when I'd rather be in the AC or sleeping.

I put together a circuit that should help make my life easier. It's an ESP32C3 microcontroller with WiFi, a relay, and a USB brick to give me a 5V supply, plus a button and a couple of indicator LEDs. I cut up a 120V cable and ran it through the relay, which is only closed when the microcontroller switches it closed.The ESP hosts a webpage that I connect to and tell it a delay time, to let my bike cool off, and a charge time. So for example, I get home, immediately plug in my bike, and either hit the button for 2 hour cool-off delay and 3.5 hours charge, or fire up a web browser and put in numbers I like better. Then the microcontroller switches the relay on at the appropriate time and off again later.

Links to pics of box exterior and interior:

It's a very simple device, and I'm completely saved by the fact that the bike has an onboard charger that does all the actual thinking. If my device fails, the bike charges to 100% but nothing catastrophic happens, assuming my box doesn't burn my shed down. I'm still working on the code as I want to make the web interface more friendly. I'll upload to Gitlab when it's done, but I can share in advance if anyone's dying of curiosity. The circuit was simple enough that it was all done mentally, so no schematic to share. But I'm happy to answer any questions. Anyway, I'd recommend spinning a PCB if anyone decides to recreate this. The wiring turned out to be enough of a pain that it's worth the $15. 

I realized after finishing it that I probably could have bought an off-the-shelf wifi-controlled outlet and set up a Raspberry Pi to host a web server and boss the outlet around. But then I wouldn't have had the button and LEDs. Not sure yet how much they'll affect the convenience of using this thing.

Total cost was around $20. Total time to build this was about 35 hours, which is about 1400 trips to the shed... so this will pay for itself in around two years  But what's more important is that I had fun. And the skills I learned messing with the ESP do actually seem like they'll be useful.

The next thing I want is to actually know the bike's charge percentage. That way I can stop charging at some target percentage, rather than a guess based on time. I think the Bluetooth interface and the CAN bus should be able to report charge percentage, but I don't know if they work while the bike is turned off and charging. Anyone know? If they don't work, how hard would it be to modify the bike and get them to be on in that mode (bike off but charging)? The alternative is to sense the current at 120V and from there try to estimate the charge, but that's a last resort. If anyone knows what sort of accuracy I could expect doing that, I'm interested in that information as well.