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It got scary. I took it out one more night and the lights failed 3  miles into a 10 miles back-road drive. Minimal moonlight, tree coverage. I was riding 5 mph 'feeling' the road edge on the dark spots, 15 on the more open areas and occasionally hitching a 1/2 mile ride behind a passing car. Coming to a full stop for car coming towards me, and having to black out my green 'run' light which seemed like a torch in the dark. 1 mile from home, behind a car again I hit a bit of a pothole and the lights came back on for 1/2 mile. Clearly a loose/bad connection, hopefully not in the DC-2-DC converter.
I opened it up - what a b*tch to get the faux gas tank off, to get at the fuse box / cabling behind the cross-member.
I still could not identify the converter and its connection from above as the video form the article posted earlier showed.
Mine had just a black-harnassed cable going to it, not an orange bundle as suggested in the video.
Maybe because I had a 2013 with the 300W adapter, not the 500W (for ABS and such)
To see the connector I had to take the little side panel off and lay on my back.
Before I got there, I had already tapped other stuff, and the light had come back on, not to go off - tricky troubleshooting!
One I knew were it was, but did not (yet) take it off - it was too tight for that.
Reading it is under power all the time I did not want to take a pry bar to it.
Anyway, I did manage to jiggle it a good few times, which hopefully re-seated it.
It was wiggly as others indicate and it had some road debris. It must have caught water splashing up as well.
A related topic that helped me was: https://electricmotorcycleforum.com/boards/index.php?topic=7041
Attached my pics from lying on the floor, one for general areas, one closer by.
On my bike the connector sits just above the mains/charger cable.
See pics.
Hope this help someone, some day.
And hoping it just stays put for now, and I don't need to actually unplug and 'grease'.

My 2013S, 19000 miles has been showing  blank display at times while driving, typically just a few seconds once a minute or so. The bike operates just fine during such outage, except for knowing my speed.
This evening it happened again, but it was dark and i realized for the first time that the headlight also failed.
It all came back seconds later.
This feels like a loose / deteriorating / oxidizing connecter.  Any suggestions where to look?
Has anyone else experience this? I searched the forum for a bit, but did not find a fitting prior topic.

Suggestions?
Hein.

So this is only held in with friction?

Yes. Hasn't moved in the past 9 years 16000 miles.
A strand of insulated wire was all it took to commit.
You can see it in light blue in one of the pictures.
Just lucky on the tube vs hole sizing. ;-)

Well, it happened to me last night - unfortunately.
No 12V, Not a single light working - at dusk fortunately.
Just coming of the highway 2 miles from home - fortunately.
It's scary to drive home very carefully without lights right by police busy with an accident - fortunately.

It turned out all I had to do (2013 S, 15K miles) was re-seat the two big plugs under the seat, under the 12V fusebox. - fortunatly.
I don't know which one did the trick.

I was about to dig deep, get to the DC-DC converter, measure it out.
I had read about the control signal to the DC-DC converter sometimes not coming thru and hoped for the simple bad-contact failure mode and it was! In a 'doesn't hurt to try' I popped them and re-seated, turned on the ignition and presto!

https://zeromanual.com/wiki/Loss_of_12V_Power

Boy I boy was I happy it 'fixed' it.
This machine is NOT designed for (internal) maintenance.
What a pain to get to anything at all.
Just to get the side-shield off you need to blindly get to a 'hidden' 3mm hex by the rear peg mounts.
I had started on removing the (break) side rear peg to get more working space but even that was nasty with a hidden 13mm bolt which I could only give a 1/12 turn each time with a 12-seat box wrench. Everything is 'from behind'. Bah.

Anyway... here is hoping it will not happen again.

Also I was thinking what if this had happened at a worse time, maybe with the DC-DC converter actually broken.
It made me wish there to be a little backup battery. But to run with head-light, brake-lights with would have to deliver more than 5 amps, so a 'normal' motorcycle battery (heavy!) would last only half an hour or so. Still some setup with LiIon, a diode or two and a hefty warning light on activation could give you 5 or 10 minutes to get to a safe spot.

Hein.

It’s my understanding that the circuit breaker must protect the max rating of the lowest amp draw device (outlet), so that 50 amp circuit breaker would have to be replaced with a 20 amp breaker if a 20 amp outlet was installed on that circuit.

Noop.
The breaker protects the wiring, not the outlets.
Think about your house.
How many outlets in the kitchen alone, each rated 15 Amps? 8+ ?
How many breakers? My guess is just 1 at 20 Amps, all outlets being fed from the same 12 Awg copper romex for sure.

 mdjak1>> "Alright, you convinced me.   But I added a new 20A, 220V circuit to the subpanel in my garage rather than connecting to the 50 amp I use to charge my car."

If you have to panel right there, and a spot for a breaker than yes for sure, add the breaker!
Well done.

Unplugging the 14-50 charger and using that plug is a good solution for me because the plug is up high and is very difficult to plug and unplug.   I am not sure if I have any room left in my subpanel for another 240 circuit.   

I am curious about your J1722 adapter.   Doesn't the charger look for proximity or pilot signal when plugged in to a socket?   Or is there always power available on the plug?

No reason for an additional circuit, just an additional outlet on the 14-50 circuit ?
The Bolt charger is 7.2 KW - 30 Amps.
The OEM charger on the Zero will pull 5 or 6 Amps @ 240 V (for a longer time).

Is your circuit/breaker 40A ( = 32 A  max = 80% all the time) or 50A?
Just don't charge at the same time?

Yes the J1772 adapter I made for my zero has a resistor built in for proximity detector.
Circuits/specs are easy enough to search in this forum or on the wild web.

hth,
Hein


T

>> Anton's Zero Voltage app is awesome, and a bargain at $4.99

Thanks for the hint! I downloaded and tried today. Looks good - Clean, Clear.

I needed it yesterday, when I ran out of battery for the first time after 12,000 miles with my 8.5Kwh 2013 Zero-S

I knew I was pushing it, leaving @ 7 bars, needing 7 in eco doing 70 to get the 32 mile to work with 29 highway.
I was likely to get into the last flashing bar.

Somehow I thought there was a 'hidden' 12th bar as reserve, but no!

With 1/2 mile of highway left the last bar went blank and speed dropped rapidly 70 - 60 - 50.
Guess I forgot to take the slight uphill over the last mile into account.
I had to wait for a big break in traffic to somewhat safely cross 3 lanes @ 30 for my left exit, with still a mile to go.
Speed dropped to 20 .. 15 or so on the long exit ramp, but it seemed happier at 10, so that's what I did... scary!
Stopped at hotel with outside wall outlet and charged for 10 minutes before finishing the last 1/2 mile @40.

btw... going all out at 80 - 85 (along with traffic in 55 zone ?!) I use 9 out of 11 bars, with a minor heat warning on last slight uphill.
So I need to charge at work to get back home.  When the outlet at work was done for a few weeks I had to use side roads.
At 40 .. 45 Mph, I need just over 5 bars and I can make it out and back to work with 65+ miles and 1 or 2 bars flashing at me.

Ah, now I see what I was missing. Sorry.
Yeah, why waste electrons when you can simply hold the brake.
Hein