ElectricMotorcycleForum.com

I haven't been able to find anything online, nor here.  Lots of car battery teardowns though.

Tl; dr: went to top off one of my packs and found it dead and bloated, considering teardown before recycling.

I bought my '13 FX pretty early, taking delivery in October of that year (VIN ends in 0197, not sure if that makes mine the 197th, 97th, or indeterminate), and bought 2 spare packs at the same time.  In 2015 I yardsaled the bike pretty hard at Hollister, bending a fork and shattering the dash (and the key cylinder, fortunately it stayed in "ON"!)  Limping back several miles with a locked up fork (and a very sore leg and mouth) was less than fun!  I had a few other issues with bent body mounts and broken (nonstructural) welds, so I decided to tear it all the way down and make a project of it.  Of course then three years went by and it's still in a series of Rubbermaid bins!  Still planning to build it into something, original plan was a cafe racer, current aspiration is to see if I can cram it into a proper dirt bike frame, though other uses have occured to me.  Lots of potentially interesting uses for a portable 44HP motor with 10 (now 7.5) kWh of juice...

Since then I've given all the packs a charge with my two 1kW offboard chargers every four months or so.  Yesterday I did the same and found one of them made the charger give an error.  Verified it wasn't a charger problem and then noticed one of the large flat sides was visibly bulging!  Glad Zero uses conservative battery chemistry as these were stored in my very flammable workshop under the house all this time!  It's now sitting outside on gravel just in case.  So poof, there went $2500.  Definitely outside warranty at this point of course.  It's SOP for me to tear down anything before I trash it (whether it's a remote control, deskjet printer, ) to either find the failure or just learn how it works, so I'm planning the same for this.  Haven't looked into battery recycling options yet, whether through Zero or otherwise.  Any idea whether Zero or others would refuse to accept a battery that's been opened?

Are there any publicly visible teardowns of this battery pack that I failed to find?  If not, that tilts me hard towards doing it and sharing the results.  If so I might do it anyway to see if there's any interesting bits to play with, and potentially learn something from fiddling with the BMS that could be applied to my good packs for my future project.  I work for an EV OEM so I have access to good advice and a discharge box, and know enough to ziptie my wrist to my back belt loop...

In other news I have a bunch of FX parts to sell.  Haven't gone to the trouble of listing anything yet, but I have a good stock rear shock, and upgraded one, and the upgraded fork internals may be salvagable.  Good wheels (stock and Hollywood SM upgrade w/ brake spacer), seat, some bodywork, etc.  Keeping all the electronics.  I'll list all this up one of these days.

Having already bought Zero's Y-cable for fast-charging back in 2013, spending another $250 when I lost it was just unpalatable!  Now that I'm building my two Quiq chargers and J1772 adapter into my FX's Givi top box, it was time to go the DIY route.  Turns out, the parts from Anderson added up to a mere ~$15!  Roughly $3 per housing (x3) and a bit over $1 per pin (x6).  I bought both 6AWG and smaller 10AWG pins and ended up using 12AWG speaker wire which I already had around.  I would've gone large but there was no pin that could hold large wire doubled-up (maybe 10AWG in the 6AWG pin but no larger).  Using the two-component speaker wire also negated any need for a wire loom/wrap.  I also used one cable clamp but with the zip ties and heatshrink I think it's not strictly necessary.  Lastly, I already had the anvil-crimper from making welding cable battery cables for a car.  I highly recommend it, but soldering's also an option.  My ratchet crimper could barely dent the pins!  I'll post about the charging top box when there's something to show.  Still figuring out how I want to pass the cable out, waterproof or otherwise.

One problem before I can test it, they seem to be keyed differently, see last image.  What's that about?!  I'll just dremel it off if there's not some reason not to.

I heard from "a source" that ATF in the motor has completely solved overheating issues for some adventurous folks.  This makes sense as it should help move the rotor heat out to the finned case, and generally help prevent hot-spots (plus adding some thermal mass).  That is the extent of what I know, so what I'm hoping to find out is, how much?  A complete fill would transfer heat the best and prevent churning it into a foam, but might stirring a fully filled motor also cause a lot of drag or even heat like a torque converter?  Is just a 1/8-1\4 fill enough to splash around?  Has anyone on here done this and is willing to share?  Obviously this would be a fully warranty-voiding experiment for the motor!  If noone knows I might take it upon myself to try it out, filling a bit at a time.  Sick of overheating!

And maybe better still, fastest first sector of all motorcycles!  Surprised I'm the firs tto post this:

http://blog.motorcycle.com/2014/07/02/events/jeff-clark-fastest-electric-motorcycle-pikes-peak-year

Mmmmm, liquid-cooled motor...  Now that I'm fitting the RC2 rear shock and Lindemann/Hollywood modified front forks, the motor overheating is about the only weakness I very badly want to address.  I might try a duct and/or 120mm computer fan in the interim.

First Supermoto in Stockton 7/20 following my first-ever motorcycle trackday (on the gas bike)!  Maybe I need to get some tartan vinyl and call it a Pike's Peak replica edition...

My charge indicator LED has been flickering randomly the last two times I attempted to charge it.  The first time was charging from low.  It started out fine but I came back 18 hours later to check on it and it was blinking but not in a clear pattern that would indicate an error:



I unplugged and replugged and it went into its normal slow steady blink charging indication.  (So apparently it hadn't charged in that time!)  I checked again a day later and it was mostly solid, but flickering just slightly every once in a while.  I just unplugged it and didn't check the charge yet.  Ambient temps have been 40-60ºF throughout.  It just came home from some dirt use but nothing too violent this outing.

Sound like anything anyone's familiar with?  Could it be just a dirty connector on the bike side?