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As I was riding home from work yesterday as part of my daily commute, I gave my DSR a little burst of throttle and heard the telltale snap and immediate rev of the motor.  I knew right away that I had broken the drive belt.  Luckily, it was a nice day in Cincinnati and it was on a side street near where I work.  I had my daughter pick me up and then came back with my pickup truck to fetch it.  I was only about 6 miles from home.  It could have been a lot worse.

I bought my DSR new and only have around 3,900 miles on it.  I take really good care of the belt.  I keep it adjusted properly, keep it centered on the rear sprocket, and spray the belt and sprockets every couple of weeks with dry silicone.  My riding is 100% asphalt so this sure seems like a premature failure to me.

I have a call into my Zero dealer and they are checking to see if Zero will cover it under warranty.  I’m only looking for Zero to provide a new belt.  I will take care of installing it.

If I’m only going to get around 4K miles out of the drive belt then I can see a chain conversion in the future.  I don't have a lot of confidence in the belt right now.  The small sprocket in the front can't be that good for it.  Design issue?

I'll follow up with what Zero says when I hear back from them.

I chose the Stebel Compact Tuning horn for my installation because it has a more durable finish and is supposed to be more weather resistant than the standard Nautilus horn.

http://www.stebel.it/stebel/products.asp?IDserie=14&uso=&tipologia=TUNING

The installation is fairly straightforward.  The kit comes with a relay and mounting hardware.  I recently installed Zero drop bars on my 2017 DSR and the small bracket on the left drop bar provided a perfect location for mounting the horn.  Otherwise, installing the horn is a bit of a challenge because there just aren’t many good places to mount it on these naked bikes.  Without the drop bars, I probably would have mounted it in the space just below the steering head and above the front fender.

I used the auxiliary terminal block that I recently installed as the source for the positive and negative lead wires for the horn.  The horn draws a lot of power, something like 18A, which of course it is only momentary.  Nonetheless, I would not try powering the horn from the 10A accessory plug on the bike.  My terminal block pulls power directly from the DC-DC converter and has a 30A fuse.  See this thread for more details.

http://electricmotorcycleforum.com/boards/index.php?topic=8402.0

The first thing you’ll want to do is remove the seat and tank cover in order to access space for the wiring and relay.  The next thing you’ll want to do is remove the OEM horn and disconnect it from the two lead wires.

I first ran a black negative wire directly from the negative spade connector on the horn to the negative side of my terminal block.  You could also pick up the negative lead for the horn from the 10A SAE accessory plug if you don’t want to install a terminal block.  I used 12-gauge wire for all of my wiring.

For the positive connection, you’ll need to use the supplied 4-pin relay.  I located the relay in the front right side area of the cavity below the tank cover.  It’s hard to make out in the photo but it’s the small black cube with the two red wires going to it.  I ran a red positive lead from the positive side of my terminal block to the #30 pin on the relay.  If you don’t want to install a terminal block you can pull the positive power directly from the top of the fuse box, like I did to power the terminal block, and run that to the #30 pin on the relay.  If you use this method you’ll also need to splice in a fuse holder and fuse.  I can’t remember if the Stebel horn kit came with a fuse holder or not, but if not then an inline 25A fuse should do.  I then ran a red positive wire from the #87 pin on the relay to the positive spade connector on the horn.

The next thing I did was to pull the wiring harness for the old horn back up into the cavity space below the tank cover.  In the photo, it’s the wires with the black mesh sleeve around them that I have secured with white wire ties.  The two horn wires connect to the #85 and #86 pins on the relay.  It doesn’t matter which wire is connected to which pin.  One wire supplies the ground for the relay and the other supplies the trigger current that allows the main current to flow through the relay and power the horn.

Now just tidy up the wiring, button everything back up, and you’re done.  And by the way, this horn is extremely loud so be careful when testing it out.

The drop bars from Zero don't come with any instructions, but fortunately there is installation information available in the Unofficial Manual and other sources online.  The installation is fairly simple, but I thought I would provide some tips and watch-outs to help make the installation go smoothly for others.
 
Brian Rice, feel free to use any of this information to update the Wiki.
 
Before you start, make sure you have a 3mm hex socket (especially if you will be removing the skid plate) and the special tool for removing the factory plastic plugs that cover the threaded mounting inserts on the skid plate and frame.  I bought this one from Amazon and put tape around the base to help keep it from scratching – see photo.
 
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0779KWP8J/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
 
If you don’t care about ruining the plugs then you could probably just grab them with a needle nose pliers and pull them out.  I plan on reusing the plugs for another project so I wanted to keep them intact.
 
The drop bar kit comes with a separate metal skid plate, which you may or may not have to use depending on your model.  If your bike already has the metal skid plate on it (like mine does) then you do not need to install the new one.  If you do need to replace it, this is where the 3mm hex socket comes in.  There are 8 button head screws attaching the skid plate, which are a real pain to remove if you try using an allen key.  There is also one attaching a ground wire to one of the threaded frame inserts on the left side (at least on my bike anyway).  Be careful, the screws are small so you don’t want to torque them down too much.
 
The kit also comes with two L brackets (left and right) that attach to the upper frame.  These L brackets are used for attaching the cross bar and upper mounting point of the drop bars.  While it is true they can only go on one way, I had to fuss with them for a while before I got it right.  Make sure the large hole in the bracket is facing forward and the leg on the bracket with the hole is on the outside of the frame – see photo.

Also note there is a small bracket welded to the left drop bar that I assumed was for relocating the horn.  That's what I used it for anyway.

The fender on my DSR came very close to hitting the cross bar so I bought some longer bolts and spacers at Home Depot to lower the fender to gain some additional clearance – see photo.
 
Well that’s about it.  Very easy install and drop bars lined up perfectly.  The finish is so so.  My drop bars came with a number of scratches on them, which I assume was from hitting against each other during packaging and shipping so the packaging could be better.  I touched them up with some satin black paint so it’s not so noticeable.

I've been reading a lot about problems with the accuracy of the SOC and miles remaining gauges on the Zero and in the app and that we should only trust an accurate voltage meter to determine actual SOC, so I'm wondering what folks out there are using.

Would this very inexpensive one being sold on Amazon do the trick?

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00LZLM182/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I took my new 2017 DSR to the dealer yesterday for the 600 mile service.  BTW, my dealer is Electronic Art located near downtown Cincinnati.  They have been great to work with and I highly recommend using them for a new purchase or servicing.

I told the owner Tim that I only needed the motor commissioning performed.  I'm happy with the way my bike is running so I didn't want to mess with any firmware update and didn't need to have anything else adjusted.  He gave me the following results of the motor commissioning, which means nothing to me so I was hoping that someone else may be able to shed some light on the results.

Offset was originally 141.25
Afterwards it was 138.19

I thought I would share my helmet lock installation on my DSR with others.  I located the lock on the left side of the frame and positioned it so that the chin guard on my full face helmet would clear the side rack and I would have access from the back of the frame to install and tighten the bolts.

I had to drill two small holes through the frame.  The metal is aluminum so it was very easy to drill.  I bought a cheap helmet lock on eBay for less than $10.  IMO, a helmet lock should have come standard from the factory, but it's really not that hard to add one.

I noticed that on my FXS the power is reduced when the battery is below a certain charge.  Is this normal and if so can someone explain what the parameters are?  Do all of the Zero models operate this way?  Is there any way to override the power limitation.

PS - Moderators feel free to move this thread.  Probably should be in Zero 2013+ forum.

Hi Everyone………I’d first like to take this opportunity to introduce myself as new member to the forum.  I took delivery of a new 2017 Zero FXS a couple of weeks ago and am looking forward to benefiting from all the valuable information here as well as being a contributor.

I’ve recently read through all 10-pages of the “Which Windscreen is OK” thread and learned a lot, but I didn’t see where anyone talked about putting a windscreen on an FXS, so I was wondering if anyone has some hands on experience with doing that. I've been looking at the offerings from all of the usual suspects (MRA, National Cycle, Slipstreamer, and Puig). I’m not interested in any of the Zero aftermarket windscreens.  They are all too small and too expensive.  The Slipstreamer Turbo that a few folks are using is way too big for my taste.  I would like something that provides decent wind and rain protection since I commute to work all year round and the weather in Cincinnati can get pretty nasty.

So far I think the Highwayshield, V-Flow Type C, V-Flow Type Z, and Vario from MRA, the Deflector from National Cycle, the Spitfire from Slipsteamer, the Rafale Universal and Touring Universal from Puig, and finally the Cal Sci prototype screen in post #103 of the thread seem to be good candidates.

So I’m looking for some feedback on which windscreens might work on the FXS model.  Is it safe to assume that if the windscreen fits on other Zero models that it will also work on the FXS?

Thanks in advance for your feedback.