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[E-Luke]

I'd love to see some reports of how quick the charge comes in on 1772!!!

[benswing]

J1772 plugs typically deliver about 6.6kW of power, so the supercharger will provide 6.6kW with most EV charging stations (aka EVSEs).  That will charge a Zero SR with power tank in 1:45 or 2hrs. 

What is really fun is seeing it on a NEMA 14-50 or high powered J1772! By hen you get 8-10kW and the time goes down to about 45 minutes!


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[Doug S]

Tonight's work, trimming, filling and glassing the bottom side. I wouldn't have posted, but I wanted to say that you should NOT do all of this! Brandon told me last night and he and Harlan have figured out how to mount the Diginow connector in the Zero charge tank housing. I love being proved wrong, it means someone proved something.

So it can be done. Brandon says they needed to trim a boss or something off the connector, but it did fit. I'm committed to my approach now but you should follow their lead instead of mine. Of course, it would have been nice to know three days ago, but at least you guys now know.

[firepower]

More Choices the better.  Looking forward to your solution.

[Doug S]

The bracket has arrived! My kit is now complete. Unfortunately, I won't have any time to work on it this evening or the next couple. I'm anxious to get to the good stuff, actually installing the charger, and I know you're all anxious to see it, too. But I should have plenty of time this weekend to get lots of pictures and thoroughly document the whole process.

[Doug S]

Well, I got back in town too late today to get to the fun stuff. But at least I did get the J1772 mounted up, after making sure to caulk well. I don't know about you guys, but I always like to use Loctite blue on my motorcycle screws and bolts. Seems like a pretty high-vibe environment to me.

[Shadow]

Ah... did you glass the top of the tank? Not enough context to tell for sure but it looks like the connector was installed to the inside of the tank pictured previously. Interesting to follow the progress.

[Doug S]

Ah... did you glass the top of the tank? Not enough context to tell for sure but it looks like the connector was installed to the inside of the tank pictured previously. Interesting to follow the progress.

I did glass it to the top of the tank. I'll get an overall picture soon to make it clearer.

Brandon sent me a pic of what he and Harlan did to get the connector mounted in the Zero housing. You can see on the side of the connector where they had to shave off some plastic to get it to work...he said it took them two hours, almost as long as my way took me!

[Doug S]

I'm waiting for some gorilla glue to set up, so I thought I'd post some pics of my adventures so far today.

First step is stripping the "gas tank" housing off, which I'm sure most of us have done at least once. Notice those two screw holes near the steering head? That's where the helmet lock mounts....with screws coming from UNDER the frame, almost impossible to reach. But I want to relocate the helmet lock, so I had to get it off. It might interfere with the new plastics, anyhow, so it might have had to come off in any case.

[Doug S]

Is it just me or does it look a little sad that it's not going back on?

[Doug S]

The ends of the J-bolts that hold the mounting bracket in place slip into two holes in the frame, which Zero clearly intended to mount the power tank battery with. The other end then passes through the bracket and is secured with a nylon-bushed lock nut. Very simple, should be very secure.

On the extreme right side of the picture, near the middle, is the connector that goes to the controller, which will mount later. You may notice the brown wire, which seems to have broken off...but I don't think it has. There's no terminal installed in the housing in the last position, and there's no mating terminal on the other side of the connector. I'm pretty sure this wire is simply not used. I wish they'd indicate that somehow, though, it's annoying to only be 95% sure.

[Doug S]

On the other side, there's a gap, through which the input power cables will pass. They're wrapped in a very tough-looking sleeve, but I still don't like sharp edges anywhere near my power cables, so I wrapped the bracket with several layers of electrical tape just in case. It'll help keep chafing down to a bare minimum.

Due to the gap in the bracket, the J-bolt nut on this side doesn't "bottom out" as well as on the other side. Don't over-tighten it or you'll wind up bending the bracket.

[Doug S]

I'm sure there are many ways to route the high-power cables to the bike's external charge connector, but here's what I came up with. As mentioned earlier, there's not much space around here, so the connector terminals aren't inserted into the connector housing. You route the wires (I'd advise taping the ends together for snaking), then install their terminals into the connector before plugging it into the bike's charge connector. Getting the power cables into the right places in the connector is pretty easy, since it's marked "+" and "-", which are the red and black wires, respectively, but the smaller signal wire (which is the one that closes the contactor) can install in four different places, only one of which is correct. Brandon's described it to me, so I'll take pictures of which position is correct.

At the charger end of the cable, everything's already pre-made, so you just plug the two connectors together. It seemed there was more room to run things on the left-hand side of the bike, so this is where I routed the wires and here's where the connectors wound up. Zero has thoughtfully already put in some anti-chafing inserts around the frame parts.

[Doug S]

The input connector installs into the "gas tank" housing, and immediately I see one advantage of Zero's way of mounting the connector. Mounting from the underside, you can remove the housing, where my connector mounts on the top side, so I'll have to remove the cable with the housing whenever I want to remove the housing. I don't think that's such a big deal though.

You can see that one side of the connector has two small-signal wires in the center, which are presumably the signal to the J1772 station that indicates a vehicle is attached and ready to charge. It's odd that these wires do not exist in the mating connector. But looking at the J-plug end, those terminals are connected to wires, one of which exits the other end of the orange sleeve and is connected to ground, but the other (a blue wire) never emerges from the orange sleeve. It seems there's some sort of circuitry in there to generate the pilot signal, so the two wires in the connector were designed out. Brandon mentioned something about the "J-control wires" not being installed, and I'm pretty sure this is it. Again, it's a little annoying only being 95% sure, but if my charger works, we'll be 100%!

You can also see one of the two allen screws attaching the cover of the heat sink to the heat sink, near the upper J-bolt. There's a second one which is hidden under the power connector in this picture; that's where I connected my ground lead (the hefty green-and-yellow wire on the left). Ground is a safety circuit which should NEVER conduct current; if it does, there's a ground fault. But in the event that there IS a fault (leakage or a dead short circuit), the ground wire is very important because it keeps the chassis from ever having line voltage on it...if line voltage does get on a grounded chassis, it'll immediately blow a fuse, which makes things safe. The two options for ground are the frame of the bike or the chassis of the charger. I elected to ground the chassis of the charger since that's where the AC power enters, and is where a fault is likely to occur.

[Doug S]

Here's where I mounted the controller, using gorilla glue, which I've decided is even more useful than duck tape (and no, it's not duct tape). I believe this is the top of the main contactor housing; I know for sure it has two monstrous wires coming out of it. The controller has wires coming out of it leading to two water-tight connectors, one which goes to the charger and one which goes to the motorcycle's Anderson connector, to pull the main contactor. This is one of my areas of concern; there are no strain reliefs on those connectors, and I worry about the wires breaking due to fatigue.