ElectricMotorcycleForum.com

Now doing the same stopping and starting on my mother's domestic ac.

I suppose its an intermittent fault with the bike, the BMS or Charger possibly? As long as its not the battery.

I'm just pleased I can use the electricity at work. I reckon I could get the other things fixed - though my EV engineer tells me that Sevcon have changed how they license their software.

Andrew

Well its all about the battery ..... Which Zero was good enough to replace for me.
I'll give it another go.

Andrew

Hi.


I tried charging my bike on an industrial Commando socket for the first time. It was slower than usual. The app showed that the charging was stopping and starting every second or so.


Does anyone know what is happening. Will it be bad for my bike?

 https://youtube.com/shorts/bnOpXDptOAc

Thanks,

Andrew

You can straighten that brake lever

Heat it with a blowtorch. Mark it with a sharpie wherever you want to bend it. When the sharpie mark evaporates the outside is the right temperature to anneal (I don't know what this means, the guy with the science is here: https://www.advrider.com/f/threads/bent-brake-lever-what-to-do.583878/page-2). Keep heating to heat all the way through, say 5 minutes. Then dunk it in room temoerature water. It will remain "annealed" for some time despite the cooling (only if its aluminium, not if its steel). Now its much easier to handle for straightening and won't melt your rear tyre.
This was all great advice off the net. My inovation was to put the cooled lever in a mole grips (vise grips) and to straighten it by roling over it with the back wheel - it occured to me that it had got bent by a 149 kg bike lying on its side in the back of an estate car (station wagon, un break) and a similiar force would straighten it out.

Alex at GoinGreen, near you in Heathrow works on any EV, and prides himself on keeping esoterric start up vehicles going after the producer has gone bankrupt. He also converts classic cars to electric. He had never worked on a bike before but did a fantastatic job on my Zero, replacing the encoder.

Andrew

Well I suppose you've all heard about MCE's bankruptcy. Anyone get any compensation for their cancelled policy yet?
Andrew

One Friday last September my motor seized just as I arrived at work (see posting: Tech Help / Motor Mechanic needed« on: September 19, 2020, 12:25:25 PM » ). Once it was freewheeling again it would judder backwards on twisting the throttle.
NEW2elec very astutely diagnosed a broken encoder and patiently explained what one was (see thread to above posting).

The AA took the bike to a Honda and Zero dealer local to my workplace. They started some diagnostic work and some disassembly with the help of instructional video tutorials from Zero. Once the most trivial flaws had been ruled out they forbade the mechanic to do any more work on the bike. They offered me a new engine at £1,600 once I had returned the old engine to California.
The bike shop told me that they were unable to help me without permission from Zero. There was mention of a 25% discount, and the engine was advertised at about that price (£1,257) on AF1 Racing from whom I’d got parts before. Sadly they felt they had to refuse to supply it : « Not sure how that item became active on the new store, but we are unable to sell the motors without a work order for repair in our own shop.  Zero does not sell the major components to user installs.»

I had to venture deep into Brexit country, with the bike in the back of a Zipcar,  to find another electric motorcycle mechanic who was prepared to work on my bike in secret, in defiance of Zero. Besides correcting a minor error in the reassembly they were not able to help, unable to identify or source the encoder.

 We have a nascent industry in the UK of installing electric motors into classic cars so I looked to one of these firms for help. The engineers at GoinGreen, near Heathrow, a more cosmopolitan part of Britain, not only have a lot of experience designing original builds for classic cars but have been selling and maintaining EVs for 18 years. They keep many cars and vans on the road where original parts are unavailable, sometimes because the startup has gone bust.

Without any help from Zero in supplying or identifying the encoder and because the part is so inexpensive, they simply ordered a range of six encoders, and one was in fact the correct part. On comparing the encoder to the broken part it transpired that the serial number had been scratched off.

After a lot more work, without any help from Zero, they eventually got the back wheel turning smoothly, at high speed, in the right direction and stopping and starting on the throttle. The bike seems to be working perfectly now but I’ve booked it in with a Zero dealer for a firmware update and to check the belt tension and suspension as the GoinGreen engineer hadn’t worked on a bike or ridden one for 20 years.

Costs

1) My way.
GoinGreen :                £720 – after a substantial discount
Up country Electric Bike Mechanic :   £126
Zipcars :                       £197
Proposed Service :            £70 – at a guess
TOTAL                       £1,131

2) Zero’s Proposal
£1,600 less 25%, plus shipping both ways, plus fitting, ?plus VAT.

I am very angry that Zero has prevented me from achieving a timely and economic repair in order to protect their trade secrets. I believe they are acting in direct contravention of the EU right to repair regulations. I know that we have had Brexit and may have lost this protection, but France and Germany are much bigger markets. No purchaser would consider paying the premium for a Zero without factoring in ecological concerns. Is it ecologically sound to bin a perfectly good engine for the sake of an encoder?
What were their plans to recycle the neodymium from their famously brushless, permanent magnet, motor?

My Zero S is a fantastic bike, beautifully engineered and well built. Making it very fast and very agile. Nothing is faster in heavy London traffic.

My fondest hope is that we are dealing with genius engineers corrupted by crap lawyers and shit accountants. Can we as a community perhaps encourage Zero management to consider that there might be sales and financial penalties in treating their aftermarket clients so badly?

Andrew de Stempel

That seems cheap on a CBT.

MCE though expensive, I paid £750 TPFT, are very helpful. Because my bike is undergoing repairs they let me cancel the policy and refunded most of the premium on a pro rata basis.

Andrew