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Messages - gadgetgirl

Pages: [1] 2 3 ... 5
1
I not only have "Magic Charging" I also have "Magic Discharging." E.G., when it charges way faster than it should (like 30% to 80% in 30 minutes at 50 aH), I'll drive a mile and shut it off. When it turn the bike on again (after a few minutes), the 80% SoC is down 20 to 30%. Anyone else have this issue?

2020 SR/F

Yes, those symptoms are consistent with a buggered battery that needs replacing. It's what happened with my 2020 SR/F pack, and I've heard many reports from others that are the same with failed gen 3 packs.

Another possibility is a change in the firmware way to estimate the SOC.
Here is some of my experience with my FXS 2016.

My old firmware was mainly calculating the SOC from the estimated capacity of the pack in Ah, and the Coulomb counting in Ah. That made the SOC monotonously decreasing, and accurate. Nice !
Indeed, all the logs with this firmware contained lines like
- "Switching to voltage SOC mode"
- "Switching to coulomb couning SOC mode" (there was a typo in the logs: it was written couning instead of counting)

And I am pretty sure also that the new firmware that has been installed is mainly calculating the SOC from the pack voltage, that is greatly oscillating depending on the way you use the bike.
And since this new firmware was installed, there is no line in the logs saying that the SOC mode is using Coulomb counting.

That is why the first thing is to answer if the change in SOC behaviour is correlated with a firmware change or not.
Of course, if the firmware has not been changed, the problem probably comes from the battery.

But it is still not certain. I have also experienced a fundamental change in my bike behavior due to the fact that the MBB had lost all its settings. The most visible consequence was a jump in the odometer (it increased by 3000 kms in one night), and completely wrong odometer count, wrong speeds (all that came from a lost transmission ratio), and also some less visible parameters were lost (pack capacity, VIN number,...). Of course, in that case, the SOC calculation became quite confused also...
Zero reprogrammed the bike and after that it worked fine.

The conclusion is that you should be attentive to anything else that could have changed in the bike (in my case: firmware, and MBB losing its settings).

I'm only aware of premature pack failure issue happening to the 14.4 packs for the gen3 bikes. Have the prior generations been having pack troubles too? The 3 dealers near me that I've talked to say they have handled many gen 3 14.4 failed pack replacements. I've only heard normal aging for the prior and following 15.6/17.3 packs.

2
Oh good grief, I realized my dumb mistake. I identified the long plastic side of the SAE on the bike is positive. So, when soldering the pigtail, I used the long plastic side as positive (plus the wire was red, plus that's the side the fuse was on from the factory). Well, SAE connectors don't work that way, do they? The accessory side polarity is a mirror, so I had the polarity reversed.

Moving on (nothing to see here), I have a fun new CarPlay/Android Auto toy on my SR/F for glanceable maps and a HomeKit on-screen button to control my garage door opener! :D

3
That's a decent chunk of power to be blowing a 7.5A fuse, definitely something abnormal like a short and not a fault on your part. What I would do is get rid of the second fuse holder so you just have the one with the 15A fuse in and then connect just the pigtail without it plugged into the device, if the fuse blows then you know the short is in that part of the cable. Of course tracing it out with a multimeter would be the safer more sensible option.

Thanks for the idea, it sounds reasonable. I just checked the SAE connector (nothing plugged into it) at the bike with the bike on. 13V and the polarity is as expected. I'll try plugging in just the pigtail.

4
I'm starting on a small project to add CarPlay/Android Auto to my 2020 SR/F. I'm hoping to tap into the collective wisdom of folks that have wired accessories to their bikes.

I bought a Carpuride W502 little device that needs 12V/1A as far as I can tell (they aren't great at publishing coherent specs). It comes with a fused power cable with raw wire ends. I had a fused SAE pigtail from an old BatteryTender Jr. laying around, so I cut off the ring terminators and soldered the red and black wires to the Carpuride red and black wires. So, at this point, I had a power cable with two fuses on it (one 7.5A fuse on the pigtail red wire, and one marked "3" on the Carpuride segment). I figured double fusing shouldn't matter as long as they're both on the power line, not the ground.

I plugged it into the SR/F SAE accessory port and switched on the bike. The headlight and dash blinked off and on, error code 27 12V low power error came up, and the "3" fuse was blown. I replaced the fuse with a 15A fuse, the 7.5A fuse blew, error code 27.

So, now I'm at the troubleshooting stage.
1) am I dumb and double fusing has some problem? I can (and might) just cut off one or both of the fuses since fusing is really intended when wiring straight to a 12V battery, not the DC-DC converter like I'm trying to do. Right?
2) I can't guarantee that the Carpuride unit isn't defective. there's no obvious short that I can find, but maybe internally it's borked. I guess I should start probing everything with a multimeter
3) my SAE accessory port could be borked. this is the first time I've tried using it. The power side was still crammed with dielectric grease, but it looked clean overall. I did test it separately with a CTEK indicator pigtail (https://smartercharger.com/collections/accessories/products/ctek-comfort-indicator-pigtail) and the green light blinked, which I think means good.
4) I'm waiting for a USB Carpuride cable to arrive to try that out. That way I can just plug it into the storage bin USB port. This will probably work, but it's seems sort of dumb to go from DC-DC 12V -> 5V -> 12V with who knows how many amps.

I'm mostly looking for reassurance that this isn't a fool's errand, and that I'm not making some glaring mistake. The links to stuff like this on the unofficial Zero wiki are dead links, so I'll just persevere and figure it out: :D

5
Zero Motorcycles Forum | 2013+ / Re: Zero SR/S - 2022 - Big Problems
« on: February 08, 2024, 03:32:44 AM »
I've had a number of those problems too. Defective main battery pack (warranty replaced), foggy display (warranty replaced), faulty compartment lid hinge (warranty replaced), recalled compartment door design (manufacturer replaced), and warped front brake disc. I haven't fixed the front brake yet, and might just do it myself (or a local shop) because the 2 closest dealers near me stopped being dealers.

6
Zero Motorcycles Forum | 2013+ / Re: 2020 SR/S Buying Considerations
« on: December 28, 2023, 08:41:26 AM »
The owners manual says the warranty is transferrable. Dealers are required to register the original buyer, and each seller needs to use the contact info in the manual to contact Zero to transfer the warranty to the new owner.

@AFM24, I would expect the main pack to fail if they have original packs. If you get the warranty transferred to you, that would be a huge stress reliever. Otherwise, my SR/F has been very nice to ride. Fit and finish are subpar compared to something like Harleys (plastic panels, crap buttons, no keyless security/start). The electronics, traction control, and power are great. All to say, my opinion is getting a SR/S for way less than retail price makes for an excellent bike. $20k retail for these isn't great value.

7
Getting a new battery as well!

Hope it goes smoothly! It took about three months for me, but they did eventually replace the pack under warranty. For months they kept saying the logs showed everything was ok and telling me that the range estimate was just that, an estimate (and obviously 40 miles total range is not right). I had to go out to the shop and ride it down from 100% to 0%, and they still said everything was fine, even though it wasn't even 40 miles. The owner of the shop had to do that again, showing the SoC dropped about 3% per mile. Finally, Zero flew an engineer out to the shop and replaced the pack on mine (and I believe a couple other bikes that had been languishing for months).

The new pack has been great. I'm watching the SoC like a hawk while it's too cold to ride for a few months now, keeping it near 60%.

8
It depends on the definition of "slower."  It takes longer for the same charger to fill up a larger battery.  It charges at the same rate, however.  I get exactly or just under 6.6kW from a capable charge cable.  It will take longer to supply more total charge however, just like it takes longer to fill a truck's gas tank than a Civic.
That makes sense. It's a linear charge curve from 0-95% on these bikes, right? All I know is that I mostly charge at glacial speeds of 1.4kW in my garage.

Are you getting the notifications from the Zero App? Using the latest Android version (App + OS), I do not. I remember this to work fine during the first months, back in 2020.
Yes, I get notifications on iOS. The most recent one I got was a few days ago on Saturday. The notification said the bike was moved. I think it sent that because I rolled it down a ramp while keyed off when unloading it from a truck. The remote connect for SoC and GPS works too.

9
Ill re-login to the app to see if the cellular works, if not, then find the fuse (?) for the Cellular, Not sure which one it is from the attached?  I never had the notifications either, but its the soc and location I want restored. (soc good when bike charging out of sight of coffee shop..)

It's fuse 1. A Zero engineer told me "With bike keyed off and key out, remove the CCM fuse (Fuse1) and reinstall the fuse.
Refer to page 6.34 in your owner’s manual."

10
Zero Motorcycles Forum | 2013+ / Re: SR/F ZF14.4 SOC issues & log diagnosis
« on: November 01, 2023, 09:38:13 AM »
I was able to meet up with the shop owner yesterday about 7 miles from me. I have nothing but good things to say about Randy from Randy's Cycle. Really solid guy and solid shop.

On a side note, I wish I could get some saddle time in, but it's freaking snowing in Chicago today!!

11
Like you suspected, the 2023 SR/F manual explains how to use parking mode in section 4.22. https://prismic-io.s3.amazonaws.com/zero-cms-disco/3c3b29e4-b1c6-4fed-a16b-e613df82eb68_Zero+FST+-+English.pdf . I'm going to enjoy parking mode. There have been a couple times I've had to back up up-hill in a parking garage because the exit lane I chose had a bad exit gate terminal. Pushing 500# backwards, uphill on my tippy toes without a reverse drive suuuuuuucks.

I read somewhere that the 17.3 kWh battery will charge slower than the 14.4 kWh battery (not by a lot, but the way it's wired will take longer to charge). Also, try pulling the fuse for the cellular modem. I've had issues before with my bike where the menu showed it was disconnected. That's just read-only info, not something you can select. Pulling the fuse reboots it. It's a little bit of a pain to get to, but easy enough.

I've been wondering about the "100%" charge too, since I just had the main pack on my bike replaced too. If we are software-locked to 15.3 kWh, "100%" should be 90% of the true pack capacity, right? I could try to keep it between 30-80% like normal, but maybe we don't need to be as diligent now? At least on mine, I am able to charge to what it says is 100%, so I would expect you can too.

12
g g girl
It might be easier to have them just ship you the charger back to you instead of the hours for the trip and the time.
Although that would be a GREAT reason to ride and test your bike!!

Aaron

Yeah, that's on my list of options. Option 1 is to meet them somewhere nearby if they happen to be headed into Chicago soon. Otherwise, I'll ask them to ship it. Riding is a little rough right now since it's in the 40s °F and rainy. It's SO nice to have my bike back and working correctly though. Parking mode is pretty cool too.

13
I just got my SR/F back today with a replaced main pack after 3 months. Like others, the 14.4 kWh pack was replaced with a 17.3 kWh pack. I'm not sure how to check, but I expect it's limited in software to 15.6 kWh. I did get parking mode too (haven't tried it yet). My bike had the magic charging and abysmal range of 40 miles before the fix. For reasons unknown, Zero wouldn't acknowledge a problem for months (requiring multiple test rides from 100% to 0%), but all of a sudden acknowledged within the past couple weeks and replaced the pack. My dealer was really solid throughout the wait, so I'm thankful that they ended up getting it repaired in the end. Now I just have to get my charger back that they forgot to put back into the storage compartment (and they're over an hour away).

14
Here is a quick video I made of the issues I am having with my 2020 SR/F premium:



Briefly, the battery drops like a rock when riding, then has massive magic charge. I can only go 27 miles now on a single charge, but can get 120 miles out of the battery if I just do short trips each day. Also the estimated time to charge is way off and the bike will just sit at it's target but keep charging.

Anyway, I plan to head to Zero in the fall (dealership is quite a trip) so I will update everyone then.

Thanks,
G

Thanks for taking the time to document this all. I'm seeing nearly exactly what you're seeing on my 2020 SR/F premium. I haven't noticed any lurching. I hope to hear back in a few days how the service on my bike will proceed with Zero.

15
Zero Motorcycles Forum | 2013+ / Re: 2020 SR/F Performance Issues
« on: June 26, 2023, 08:12:28 PM »
I'm waiting to get my bike in July 18 as their first available day. Further nutty behavior for my bike is that I tried charging it to a charge target of 80% on Friday. At "88%" I unplugged it. The next time I turned it on to ride it (on Sunday), the SoC showed 38%. This blows. I hope I don't run into any warranty issues from Zero, and I'm encouraged that you all seem to be having a decent experience with warranty repairs.

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