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Zero and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

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Andrew Zero S:

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

Crissa:
It sounds like your initial dealer tried to scam you.  Zero only takes motors back to see warranty type repairs, and would only stop them from working if they screwed it up.

-Crissa

Anx2k:
Care to post the exact model number of the encoder?  It could be that it could help someone in the future who encounters a similar issue.

Crissa:
Also, I have never had to pay for a part shipped to/from Zero.  (Admittedly, that's never been more than across the valley a few times but the point stands.)

If you took it in, and the commissioning failed soon after, that sounds like the service tech effed up and it should be their bill.  I don't see why you'd blame Zero for the dealer trying to wriggle out of the damage.

-Crissa

NEW2elec:
Hello Andrew, first thanks for the kind words for helping you.  I'm glad the videos shed some light on why I thought the encoder was the problem.

But to be honest and for the record I didn't think changing the encoder was a job for anyone without full knowledge of electric motors and how they work.  Opening the motor, replacing the encoder, resealing it, being able to test the results with high degree of confidence is a task I don't think most people can do.  I could not.

If you feel comfortable with the guy who worked on yours and you feel it fixed the problem then I'm glad it worked out for you.

I don't know if your dealer caused a problem at one of your services or not, or the encoder could have just failed on it's own.  It would be hard to prove either way.

I'm torn between wishing Zero could improve it's tech help with dealers as this has been an issue in the past but not 100% across the board for all owners. And then the fact that a bad repair made by someone who didn't really know what all is envolved could be deadly.  So giving a novice parts for what could be a very dangerous job could be as irresponsible as a bar tender letting a very drunk man drive home.

Try to understand Zero is a fairly small company on the US west coast which puts a small time zone window open with EU.  They should be able to do better but there are limits.  They just aren't Honda or BMW.

Good luck.

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