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Zero Motorcycles makes its service manuals free

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Re: Zero Motorcycles makes its service manuals free

#141

Post by mk_stjames »

mintplant wrote: post #20
porknubbins wrote: post #17

Are there any OEMs whose service manuals are hard to find? I restore cars and motorcycles and have never had trouble finding a pdf or hard copy for around $20. Its good that they are doing this though a lot of the secrets I’d want to know about an electric motorcycle are about the ECU when that software is some of the most tightly guarded of any.

I acquired an old Sony CMT-EX1 CD player a while back and was tinkering around with it. I found the service manual online and was blown away. There are pinouts! Block diagrams [0] for the PCBs! Capacitor inventories! I wish we still did this for consumer hardware. [0] https://servlib.com/sony/audio/cmt-ex1-hcd-ex1.html?start=29

Japanese service manuals for electronics, especially ones starting in the early 80's when the printing quality started getting really good, are a sight to behold. In the era before the EDA software did everything, the annotated schematics and PCB board layouts in the manuals are gorgeous, especially those by Sony and Matsushita / Panasonic.

When the EDA tools started making the prints fully automatically and all the tables and notes just became automated outputs to PDF... it kinda killed a bit of the artistry that went into the layouts of the prints. I also feel that the care and choosing the fonts / lettering styles / etc. have become eschewed in favor of just putting out whatever the defaults are from current software without care of adjustment. It's why all published schematics these days look alike, and boring by comparison.

The early Walkman manuals are a good example of this:

https://archive.org/details/wm-f15_202004/SONYWM-DD_service_...

The perfect little isometric views of the special isolated components in boxes along the outside, the shading of the traces on the PCB....

Re: Zero Motorcycles makes its service manuals free

#142

Post by numpad0 »

vladvasiliu wrote: post #114
turdprincess wrote: post #99

Good move, but another thing this brand does is charge you a monthly subscription to unlock the full battery range on your bike. If you don’t pay, you lug around a dead weight extra battery you cannot access. Overall this brand is notoriously unfriendly to consumers.

I wonder how this works in practice. Is this, in practice, equivalent to some laptops' and newer androids' setting of never fully charging the battery in order to improve the overall battery lifetime if you know you won't use the 100% anyway? Or is it just dead weight which is never touched and you just use fewer cells, but always the same?

You can't mix and match batteries varying in wear, or address and charge arbitrary inividual cells, so it has to be just lower state of charge, e.g. 80% true charge displayed as full.

Re: Zero Motorcycles makes its service manuals free

#143

Post by lloeki »

0wis wrote: post #127
JumpinJack_Cash wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are going nowhere. Electric motorcycles are a terrible idea because they are not the problem as far as emission go. Given the ratio between the weight of the motorcycle and the weight of the passenger/s they are extemely efficient, having the whole passenger vehicles switch to motorcycles would be even better than have them switch to 3000 pounds EVs. The vast majority of people are too coward to drive them unfor…

Following your thought process, even better is everyone on bikes. That’s what is happening slowly in many developed cities. Everyone on a motorcycle (mostly scooters) is what you have in southeast Asia. And true, it allows much higher densities than US highways packed with cars, but the price is reduced confort and security… Hard to make people accept that nowadays. To give a contrarian view, I would happily become a…

Around here there's been semi-historically a bike culture in my city (certainly not at Amsterdam scale but one of the most bike friendly city in France). I see an increasing number of people with ev bikes, and in turn an increasing proportion of that are ev bikes that borderline being 70cc equivalent, maybe even 125cc, both in power, style, and usage (as in there are pedals but the drivers don't pedal). Except for the speed cap they're essentially more like small ev motorbikes (masquerading as ev bikes because regulations) than big ev bikes.

Re: Zero Motorcycles makes its service manuals free

#144

Post by nmelkozerov »

dmurray wrote: post #131
hgomersall wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have specific knowledge on this? I'd be surprised if it was literally dead weight. It's much easier to design a software control system that uses a common set of cells and caps the full charge than one that switches different cell blocks in depending on what's enabled.

Is it? It seems like the simplest of circuits to disconnect one cell from the rest.

It is not as simple as it seems. If you connect the "unused" cell in a series, it could alter the battery's output voltage by as much as 4.2 volts, which has the potential to damage the voltage regulator.

On the other hand, if you connect the "unused" cell in parallel, it's absolutely crucial that it holds the same charge as the other cells at the time of connection. This is because the parallel pack's voltage will level out, leading to a substantial flow of current (essentially causing rapid charging/discharging of the cell). This can result in a fire or even a battery explosion if the cell voltages are too different.

All in all, physically detaching a battery might not be the best approach. The cells will experience different levels of wear, and variations in internal resistance will lead to problems with cell balancing and longer charging times.

Re: Zero Motorcycles makes its service manuals free

#145

Post by function_seven »

dmurray wrote: post #131
hgomersall wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have specific knowledge on this? I'd be surprised if it was literally dead weight. It's much easier to design a software control system that uses a common set of cells and caps the full charge than one that switches different cell blocks in depending on what's enabled.

Is it? It seems like the simplest of circuits to disconnect one cell from the rest.

No that would be more complex. You’d have to add a relay and something to control it. Much easier to just map 80% to “100%” on the display and in the BMS.

Re: Zero Motorcycles makes its service manuals free

#146

Post by [deleted] »

randunel wrote: post #113
turdprincess wrote: post #99

Good move, but another thing this brand does is charge you a monthly subscription to unlock the full battery range on your bike. If you don’t pay, you lug around a dead weight extra battery you cannot access. Overall this brand is notoriously unfriendly to consumers.

I'd been considering getting a Zero versus other brands for over a year, and you comment got me to reconsider, thanks! I wasn't are of this scummy behaviour of theirs until now.

[deleted]

Re: Zero Motorcycles makes its service manuals free

#147

Post by barrkel »

matsemann wrote: post #138
mmh0000 wrote: post #36

I’ve been wanting an electric motorcycle for years. But every time I look at the pricing I just can’t justify it. An entry level electric bike for $25k or a top of the line BMW for $18k. It’s just not even a comparison.

No market for electric motorbikes. Based on my experience the reason for buying a motorbike is to be obnoxiously loud and disturb your whole city block. Can't do that with electric.

Classic availability bias.

This can be replaced by electric: https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fn...

Re: Zero Motorcycles makes its service manuals free

#148

Post by dharmab »

ce4 wrote: post #139
ce4 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That depends on the number of cylinders, valves per cylinder, and so on. Your parallel twin is probably easier to service (accessability of valve covers, valve mechanism). Some designs require the removal of the gas tank and even camshafts (eg Suzuki V-Strom). (Old) Ducatis are also a pain with the desmodromic valves (i.e. springless valves). Some of their valves have 0,0 clearance and the mechanic needs to hone down…

Answering dharmab's response Ugh, pulling and especially re-inserting the camshaft shouldnt be done in a hurry. At least from my experience with the V-Strom's V-engine. Needs to be cooled down and insertion of the camshaft needs proper care (no dinging of the bearing shells) and one must make sure to not skip a tooth at the geartrain/chain.

I mean, I take my time with the cams, but it's not rocket science. There's timing marks to help line everything up and I snap a pic with my phone before taking them out.

Re: Zero Motorcycles makes its service manuals free

#149

Post by fit2rule »

randunel wrote: post #113
turdprincess wrote: post #99

Good move, but another thing this brand does is charge you a monthly subscription to unlock the full battery range on your bike. If you don’t pay, you lug around a dead weight extra battery you cannot access. Overall this brand is notoriously unfriendly to consumers.

I'd been considering getting a Zero versus other brands for over a year, and you comment got me to reconsider, thanks! I wasn't are of this scummy behaviour of theirs until now.

[dead]

Re: Zero Motorcycles makes its service manuals free

#150

Post by JumpinJack_Cash »

tiew9Vii wrote: post #95
JumpinJack_Cash wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > My stock Energica does 0-60 in 2.8s. Should I be impressed? That's the same of a 1999 Yamaha R6 selling for less than 1000$ [0] And the R6 can do it all day, you'll run out of tires before you run out of clutch and gas. The Energica does it once and then it's panting and overheating. And as always the point in motorsport is that every noob squid and every idiot is capable of going fast in a straight line, the lig…

The R6 is an inline 4, 15500rpm red line, 68nm of torque. Fun bike, on a track or doing illegal speeds on the road. Rest of the time, it has no power. The Enigica has 215nm of torque, about twice the 2022 R1. The R6, the power is all up top, it’s gutless down low, you have to be up near the top in the rev range for it to go, engine screaming away. You’d also need to be pretty skilled at launching to get that 2.8s acc…

> > The R6, the power is all up top, it’s gutless down low, you have to be up near the top in the rev range for it to go, engine screaming away

With the introduction of ride by wire in the early 00s the electronics became king.

You can customize the throttle ride by wire system according to your preference so the torque area becomes much larger and spread out on the throttle when you move your wrist.

Once the problem of wrist sensitivity has been solved by ride by wire customization the high revs you mentioned are much more manageable.

And also you say engine screaming away like it’s a bad thing.

1) a 4 cylinder in line at 10000rpm is music for an enthusiast ears

2) It makes people aware that you are there , which is a feature not a bug, motorcycles are notoriously invisible for car and truck drivers

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