I had my first real scare whilst riding home today. Not bad after three years, but here's the story.
After a full recharge and four miles into my journey home (during a left turn), there was a big clonk noise from the motor. Not a problem, I've had this before, usually soon followed by a yellow spanner that disappears after 30 seconds or so. This time, no spanner. I pressed on.
After about half a mile, I tried to accelerate reasonably hard, to be rewarded with a loss of power and big vibration from the motor. Backing off the throttle restored power and I was able to accelerate gently up to 50 mph. At the next road junction, I tried to use the regen to stop, but couldn't... same vibration from the motor. Fortunately, my reactions are good and I stopped safely with the brakes. Now though, it wouldn't accelerate at all and I had to push it to the side of the road.
Following a soft reset (Ignition off, then on again - I knew that IT helpline response "Have you rebooted your machine?" would come in handy one day!), everything returned to normal: Strong acceleration and regen, almost like nothing had happened.
Has anyone else had a similar experience? Any clues gratefully received!
Cheers,
Brian
It sounds a lot like the problem that put my bike out of commission two months ago, but I wasn't lucky enough to be restored after a soft reset.
Sounds like dust/dirt on the encoder at the rear wheels
which puts the motor phase out of sync.
If you get the accasional clunk on Accel.
might be time for a clean and/or re-calerbrate
Yes - I've had this happen twice in broadly similar circumstances. The loss of regen was the bigger worry for me, but after a restart things went back to normal, and during a service nothing untoward was noticed on the diagnostics PC. It's been nearly 11 months since the last time, so I wonder if it is an annual event? ;)
- Raymond
This has never happened to my Vectrix.
The only similar event I get is that - only during the first acceleration after booting up - there is a kind of bang from the rear end and the motor stops and needs a reboot. It happens probably every time I give full throttle within two seconds of booting up, maybe also later, but only if I give sudden full throttle when I first turn the throttle after booting up. Once I have managed to restrain myself for the first throttle turn, I can do whatever I want on the following accelerations.
This information may be used entirely at your own risk.
There is always a way if there is no other way!
Thanks for the feedback guys!
The ride to work this morning was uneventful, maybe just a one-off (fingers crossed...)
It's about due for a routine service anyway, I'll add it to the list of things to look at.
Brian
Yes, these exact symptoms happened to me once. I also was used to the clunk and then the spanner, but that 1 time it lost power and i had to stop and reboot.
Never happened again.
RaDy
Mik
This is caused by the headlite coming on while accelerating hard just after power up. The headlite delays about 3 seconds before turning on and when you accelerate hard the MC fan also turns full on. The surge in demand on the 12V causes it to dip and resets the processor.
Aha! Thanks!
All made worse by the my HID light's inrush current, no doubt!
This information may be used entirely at your own risk.
There is always a way if there is no other way!
This happened to me today for the first time. I've got over 4000 miles on my 2008. 15 miles into my commute, thud and loss of power. Applying throttle felt like I was lightly braking. No problem lights. Since I read this forum I knew to try and pull over and do a power reset. I then drove another 7 problem-free miles to work.
I experienced this twice, once while in town, riding at about 50 MPH (clunk, loss of power, yellow wrench light), and once while riding on the freeway about 60 MPH. Both times I pulled over, turned the bike off and on -- and back to normal, like nothing ever happened. It's probably been a year since it happened -- I had just about forgotten about it until I read your post!