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Topics - Andrew Zero S

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Parts, Mods And Hacks / You can straighten that brake lever

« on: January 09, 2023, 12:41:18 AM »

Originally posted in "I have a banana"

Heat it with a blowtorch. Mark it with a sharpie first 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.
Andrew

PS lots of posts say don't risk a dodgy repaired brake part for the sake of a ten dollar part. In California its $50, here its £95. Its made in Spain.

General Discussion / Good news for London EV bike charging

« on: April 13, 2022, 10:55:31 PM »

Charging is an obvious barrier to EV use for a flat dweller. I used to rely on a charging point at work but 4 wheeled EVs kept burning out the socket. In a crisis I would run a cable from our 4th floor flat down the communal stairs. At work it was the ambulance bay. Things got bad when my battery started to fail, capacity not much more than my one way commute (Zero replaced it with an upgrade, 6.5KWh to 7.2KWh, without a quibble over 2 months).
I have now worked out how to use the menekes type 2 charging ports that Westminster City Council puts on many of its lamp posts. You have to buy an adaptor but it needs to be a type 2 menekes, not the J1772 oferred by Zero. The type 2 can be had for £165 from evbitz.
While it doesn't speed up charging at least it means you can charge in public. You can almost always get close enough, between cars, to chain the bike to the lamp post, though you may need a second chain. So I don't think its a problem leaving the bike overnight. You can tun off the charging from the app at home. Westminster gives free residents bay parking, free bike bay parking and free pay to park bay parking after you've paid the first 10 minutes.
To help any Londoner considerring getting an electric bike I've made a youtube:

I can really recommend an electric bike in London, especially with what the've done to Park Lane, the Mareylebone underpas and most of Camden and Islington.

Andrew

Tech Help / Zero and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

« on: June 09, 2021, 06:11:05 PM »

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

Tech Help / Motor Mechanic needed

« on: September 19, 2020, 12:25:25 PM »

Hi

Can anyone put me in touch with a mechanic in the UK who is prepared to strip down and assess the motor on a 2017 Zero S ZF6.5 11kW?

Zero is refusing to allow their dealer to open the engine. They are oferring a replacement engine at a 25% "discount" estimated at £1,700, ($2,200) after labour, and then they insist on having the seized motor returned.

My story is:

I arrived at work and got off the bike to push it backwards into the charging bay. I may have left the ignition turned on. The back wheel wouldn't turn. I pushed it forward, now definetly turned off, it rolled abot 2 feet and was then completely locked, not freewheeling backwards or forwards. I turned the power on and tried the throttle. The engine made some extraordinary gurgling noises continuing for some 20 seconds despite closing the throttle. The bike was now able to roll freely. I left it to charge before trying again.
I left work early because I got punched on the nose by a psychiatric patient (only the second time in 32 years). I tried the bike with a full charge, though no longer seized it wouldn't move under power.
The AA wouldn't authorise a tow truck until they had seen me try the bike. This time the bike moved slowly under power but backwards.
The authorised dealership has been very helpful and competent in the past and I'm sure would be keen to work on the engine. Earlier they told me they were getting video tutorials from Zero. In the end they were advised to disconnect the electrical supply and then test the motor. They apparently were not allowed to do more.
The bike is 2 months out of warranty. I had hardly used it for 2 months because we had been on holiday for 3 weeks and before that it was being repaired for a faulty charging unit that broke a few days within warranty. I can't see how that failure or the repair could have ruined the motor but if anybody knows more ...... The dealer was very efficient about getting the parts and doing the repair and had previously been very helpful tidying up some of my "improvements" during routine servicing.

One way or another I will get the bike back on the road, the traffic in London is getting worse and worse, but I resent Zero's attitude:

1) They should acknowledge our right to repair;

2) I've learnt on this forum that the fault may well be relatively minor;

3) No adequate attempt at fault finding has been made, weither the fault resulted from a design flaw, poor workmanship or poor materials or indeed misuse by me.

So if anyone could get me an address I'd b very grateful.

Thanks for listenning to my moan,

Andrew

Zero Motorcycles Forum | 2013+ / Maximum rated carrying capacity

« on: September 16, 2018, 01:23:32 AM »

I drove my son around town today and the handling of my 2017 Zero S was awful. I looked up the online manual and was shocked to see that the maximum carrying capacity is only 149kg. We weigh about 85kg each. I have carried a lot of pillion passengers on smallish high performance bikes before (an RGV 250, RD 350s, an RD 250 , a CZ 125, and even an FS1E) and of course the geometry changes but not to the extent of this loss of handling performance.

Is the "carrying capacity" limit an immutable safety issue? Are there rigid bits of the frame or wheels that could fail under the strain? Or can it be corrected with suspension adjustments?

I don't mean to moan, I love my Zero and the acceleration, responsiveness and handling enliven my dull commute. I could perfectly well live with it being a solo bike, but my boy would miss out.

I'd be grateful for any advice and I will forward this text to Zero.

Andrew

Parts, Mods And Hacks / R&G tail tidy, chop the fender / mudguard

« on: September 04, 2018, 06:19:26 AM »

Being an urban rider I have to squeeze the bike into pretty tight spaces. On my first day, driving home from the dealer, I stopped at my mother's for a charge. While manoeuvring into the front garden the numberplate snapped off because it stuck out so far back. The law in the UK is that the numberplate has to be behind the rear axle. There is no need for it to be behind the rear wheel.

After watching the video on EMF I ordered the R&G tail tidy. It was easier to fit on a 2017 Zero S than in the video because the electric connectors for the numberplate light are distal to the demagnetiser and any cable ties so there is no splicing or cutting, the supplied wires plug straight in - except that my tired middleaged eyes confused the dark brown live with a black earth. R&G sent me a replacement free of charge which I had to rather sheepishly return once I realised my mistake.

Andrew

General Discussion / UK Insurance

« on: June 27, 2018, 02:52:50 AM »

This is also in my new member post, sorry about the duplication.

I am receiving my new Zero in 3 days and I can't get a quote.

The problems I have are:

1) The 2017 1nd 2018 Zero S models are rated at insurance class 0 meaning the underwriters don't have enough information about the model's risk profile.

2) I have 7 points on my licence.

Andrew

General Discussion / new member

« on: June 27, 2018, 12:52:19 AM »

Hello all,

I have just bought a 2018 Zero S in the UK but I cannot get insurance.

Any British owner's out there who can advise?

The problems I have are:

1) The 2017 1nd 2018 Zero S models are rated at insurance class 0 meaning the underwriters don't have enough information about the model's risk profile.

2) I have 7 points on my licence.

Andrew