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[Specter]

So, one of the Florida summer T-storms blooms up today.  It's literally sunny, then 20 minutes later, it's lightning hitting everything and hail falling.  20 minutes after that you got an inch plus of rain fell, 20 after that and the rain is stopped but everything is now swamped and flooded.

My streets were flooded again.  One viaduct caught me way off guard in my truck, bastard had almost a foot of standing water, and I hit it at about 45 mph, that was a nice sudden wakeup call as it sure tried to put me into the wall.  Many areas of the road will have standing water, maybe 2 inches deep for a hundred feet or more, sometimes 40 foot long but 3 or 4 inches deep. 

To the point.

Lets say you are on your bike and you hit a flooded street at 45 mph, find standing water at a few inches for maybe 100 feet.  Is this pretty much a you are going down scenario or can you potentially save it and coast to a stop or super slow crawl and pray you don't slide it down?  the rain stopped, you are riding carefully trying to get home and find yourself in a minor flood area.  Is this an absolute show stopper or can you possibly navigate it fairly safely if you are very slow and methodical?

Those tires on the bike, unlike a car / truck which have huge rain gates, only have like narrow slits.  My brain wants to tell me, boy you are in for a bad day here!  what have been your experiences?

Thank you
Aaron

[TheRan]

I've made it through water deep enough to come over the top of the tyres on the DS, just went super slow (very easy on an electric bike) and lifted my feet up. That was off road too so under the water wasn't the smoothest of terrain, would have been even easier on road. I've also come across some flooding on a 60mph road, doing maybe 50 when I saw it and started braking from say 45 and got to sub 20 when I hit it. And that's going around a corner on a country road, in most situations it would be visible even sooner.

[Specter]

Glad to see it is not an instant dump.  Hitting it at speed though may be a problem.

One thing that would bother me, on the Energica the charger is under the seat and that entire area is NOT water proof at all !!
I seen the way your bike threw water up and know mine got me kind of wet when I was driving in heavy rain, with that much free water going up and all over, Id be worried about water getting up under there and then down into the charger and when you goto use it pop !  Yes it's kind of rain proof, light splash proof, but not tidal wave proof

Aaron

thank you for the post.

[TheRan]

The funny thing is the first time I washed my bike by hose I started getting issues the next day, chassis isolation faults and stuff like that. Bought some dielectric grease with the intention of going over the bike and covering any exposed connections with that but never got around to it. But, it's been fine wading through deep water a few times now and being rinsed off with a hose. I would suggest getting some grease and coating the connections to the charger if you can get to them, even if you're not planning on fording any streams it will help with any small amounts of water that could get in there from riding in the rain.

[princec]

Mine completely broke after riding through a 4" puddle.
Turns out there's a bus-bar underneath the battery somewhere that's not really waterproof and it had a crack in it and shorted. That was replaced. But it still didn't like getting wet, at all. Also turns out pre-2023 the 3kW chargers on the SR/* bikes were not in any way waterproofed! The new ones are IP67. No trouble since but I've not ridden through any huge puddles since either...

Cas

[Specter]

Of course! 

Nobody wants to run thru puddles, that's just bad news all around, but especially like down here in gator land, it can rain like an sob and drop an inch on my house and literally at the end of the block, a light mist, so you can find yourself riding up on standing water w/o really trying or warning.  If you live in Fla you WILL get wet and find standing water!

When running thru standing water, the hydrostatic action of the tires will ram / force the water up and very easily up under the seat and into stuff where it don't need to be.  If you happen to get caught off guard and hit that puddle at 30 mph or so, that water jet will be very forceful too.  What happens when YOU avoid the puddle or slow way down but the guy in the other lane coming towards you, is in a truck and don't give a $#$#ck because he's off to the rodeo and hit's HIS at 45 MPH and that huge wave comes slamming at your bike?

Aaron