We have about 30-50 days left of standard motorcycling weather in Michigan. This seems beyond crazy to pay a loan, interest, insurance, for use of a car when I thought I purchased a dependable product and all of the accessories to go with the Zero. Losing power in the middle of rush hour traffic is downright dangerous!
Reading about others experience tonight is making me rethink my whole experience with Zero.
Ben: Last year my 2012 was in the shop for the entire month of August due to glitching. I had only had it 2 months when it went into the shop. I remember feeling very much like your post. I hope that Zero can figure your bike out and get you back on the road.
Protomech: Glad to see it looks like you'll be riding electric again soon. Your presence here & brammoforum and your dedication to e-moto's is a huge boon to both Zero and Brammo. I think they should both provide you with a free 2013 model. I'm a little surprised you didn't get better treatment from Zero with your encoder problem given your history and status. Also I'm curious how your rebuilt motor holds up --- last year, post-glitch-service, I got a new motor cause my old one failed. I wonder if that wasn't a lucky break (no pun intended) as I remember they changed something in the 2012 motor manufacturing process to improve motor encoder reliability. Maybe your rebuilt motor will also have those mods?
I have to say my Zero has been working flawlessly this summer. I'm racking up the miles and really enjoying it. I bought the Zero as a novelty, but now that I've ridden electric I have to say I'm hooked. I clearly prefer electric to gas for commuting around town.
When all is well, I find myself reading the forum alot but not posting so much. When you read some of the threads, I can see that a casual observer might think Zero's have significant quality issues. But I do wonder if the majority of Zero owners are more like me: happy and lurking.
I think you're right that 2012 S/DS glitch sufferers are over-represented among posters here for the simple reason that no one starts a thread or posts in a thread titled "No problems with my Zero."
Zero claims that less than 5% of 2012 bikes exhibit glitch symptoms. Maybe that's so but this seems unintuitive given that a significant proportion of active posters here sooner or later start to talk about glitch experiences, certainly more than one out of 20.
That includes yours truly who began to experience glitch symptoms for the first time this June after no issues the previous riding season.
After reporting the issues to my dealer who reported them to Zero the glitches went away for a about month until mid-July then returned.
I started a thread where I attempted to narrow the cause to condensation of water perhaps on circuit boards or inside the motor when the cooled-off bike is stored overnight in hot, moist air. I can still reliably produce glitches this way but abandoned it as a general theory of the glitch because several of you like in desert conditions and get glitches anyway. I still wonder if in the early AM there isn't a dew point in those deserts that produces condensation on the inside of the motor that interferes with the encoder, but who knows.
Rather than turn the bike over to the dealer for what may a long glitch fix process by process of elimination, as others here have experienced, I decided to figure out how to live with it for the rest of the season and turn it over when the riding season ends.
Here's what I've been doing all summer to continue to enjoy the bike.
When the air is dry (low relative humidity -- RH) and relatively cool I have no issues, such as yesterday. The day before I'd parked the bike outside under a cover versus in the garage. The RH got up to 100% after a brief sprinkle overnight. I knew I was in for glitches that morning and I got them.
The way I've learned to live with them is as follows. I will always get a rough running motor before a cut-out glitch. The rough motor come on at random, at any speed. If I try to ride through it by accelerating then decelerating to engage the regen, which I used to do, the rough motor goes away but there's a good chance that the next time I come to a stop the bike will not move off the line when I give it throttle and I'll have to reboot. I have never experienced a motor cut-out at speed. Now instead of riding through it if the motor runs rough I pull over when safe to do so and reboot. Then the bike usually, but not always, operates without issues for the rest of the ride, but not always for the rest of the day.
Hope the description is helpful. Also hoping that by this fall that Zero will have figured the root cause and the fix process will be short.
Due to these issues and reports of issues with 2013 bikes, I decided to skip 2013 S and will upgrade to a 2014; presumably the reported bugs in the new design will be ironed out by then and some of the oft-repeated improvement suggestions, such as to the tires and suspension, will have been implemented.
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Topic: 2012 S zf6 Motor cutting out (Read 15113 times)