Hey!
6,000 miles (5,900 to be exact, I believe), and falling to pieces! Man, I thought it was a lost cause. Is it true there are other Lepton users on this board?
So here's my story. I got my first Lepton several years ago from someone that bought it from zapworld.com. About 3,500 miles on it, and the sensor-cable that connected to the sensors on the motor started falling apart, and that basically spelled the end of it after absentmindedly tweaking around with it, smoked the controller. Ouch. I got a second one from the same person, and that one's still "working".
"Working", because ever since I got it, it's had a bit of a... well... mood problem. The controller will do what it wants, when it wants. Sometimes regenerative braking will turn into "inverted control" - try to slow down and it'll go faster, try to speed up and it'll coast, or any other number of odd combination. Like it loses control of the timing on the motor and does its own thing. A restart fixes it until it decides to do it again. Sometimes I can go several trips without a single problem, sometimes it does it 4 or 5 times on a single trip (have to pull over to restart it... ugh). One up-side is, on a particularly long stretch of road, I was sometimes able to reliably convince it to "screw up", which means that as I leave the accelerator at zero, it'll actually go up to 45MPH some days. Unsafe as hell, but quite exciting!
Man, I have a lot of things to discuss though, if anyone's really out there! Particularly in the sources for parts department, but I have other concerns as well. Is it true that it really has an internal charger built into the controller? It came with an external charger and a battery cable in the seat compartment; I bungied the charger to the back "rack" and hang the cable out the side. It charges fast, but I hate that stupid charger. Would be really nice to just use the internal charger for once!
Hit that reply button if you're even remotely interested, I'd love to hear from anyone! I feel so alone being the only person I'm aware of that owns one... I've got a lot to share from my years of experience being the only one with _ANY_ technical knowledge of this thing ;)
I am a relatively new owner of a Lepton so I can't address the more technical questions you have. I haven't had any of the problems you describe (but I'm no where near the mileage). However, about the charger...
According to the service and owner's manuals, Leptons came in 2 models: The Lepton, which was equipped with SLA batteries, and the Lepton-e which had NiZn. Dealers reported problems with the NiZn batteries and they began retrofitting their scooters with SLAs and installing an external SLA charger. I think the original built in NiZn charger is still there, but obviously it can't be used unless you go back to NiZn. I bought mine from Thunderstruck Motors in June this year and I also have the "external" SLA charger. As I am going to convert the scooter to LiFePO4s anyway I knew I would be bypassing both the internal and the SLA charger. I don't know if this helps other than to let you know there are other Lepton users around. So far mine has been trouble free.
"Tis better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt." Abraham Lincoln
Yes! My relatively new Lepton-e (about 3 months old) is having what sounds like the exact same problem with the controller. It's always started up okay again if I turned the ignition off and then on. But today I had to call my boyfriend and have him help me push it off the road when I got that "Error 2" message and the old turn off and then on routine didn't work, for the first time ever. This after I just had the thing in the shop for three weeks--aargh. It's good to know I'm not alone, but I'm still broke and poor and this is my only vehicle, so jeez, i really want it to work, dammit.