Fixing The Cheapest Legal Electric Motorcycle!
[Music] All right, it’s my 2016 Zero FXS and it cost me £1,300. Here’s what I’ve done to it. So, from the start, fitted these 50/50 road off-road tires, the super rains, it’s really horrible gray weather. So, here’s some green to brighten things up. They have done more or less everything that I’ve wanted them to do onroad and off. So, new tires. I fitted new brake pads to it as well, front and rear. I have removed the original headlight because it’s and looked horrible and replaced it with this board and this push bike headlight which work really well and they’re rechargeable and you can turn them off if you need to. Fit these handguards again which I had laying around to protect my fingers from trees and rocks etc. To mount the headlight, I also had to move the dash onto here. These have been mounted with some custom brackets that I 3D printed. It was about the only place I could fit the dash where it wasn’t in the way. I wanted to keep the dash to have my battery percentage and mileage, etc. Fitted new grips. They’re not fantastic, but they work. What else have I done? I guess the biggest change I’ve made is this. the world’s biggest sprocket. It was originally belt drive, but the original belt had done thousands of miles, and I did get a replacement belt for as well, which I made to fit. That snapped after about 10 miles. So, then we went to the train and sprocket route. These have been on for maybe not. You can see it’s done 16,580 miles, which is quite a lot. I’m fairly sure they’ve been on for about 100 miles now and they look brand new. There’s no strange wear and tear to the rear sprocket which I kind of half expected. What I had to do on here because of the combination of front sprocket, which we’ll get to in a second, rear sprocket. They’re different pitches. I ended up having to run a 530 chain on a 520 rear sprocket. Hence, this gap you can see here. It’s about 2 mm. I’ve tried to space out the rear sprocket to move over into this gap, but it still seems to want to run here. So, I was a bit concerned that it was going to wear away this pretty quickly or wear my chain down, but it hasn’t, so that’s good. I haven’t read it for a while. So, that is just surface rust, but I can assure you it has been welloiled. So, the front sprocket, this was £12 from Amazon. The rear sprocket was about £80, I believe. The chain is nothing special, but nothing crap either. I could only get it in a 530 pitch to fit onto the shaft on this motor. The later motors used a splined shaft, but these used a keyway shaft. That was the only front sprocket I could get to fit on there without having to do some machining, which I can’t do inhouse. I was also concerned how long this front sprocket would last as well, given it was £12. So, later on, we’re going to take the chain off and just inspect the front sprocket to see what it looks like after 100 miles of use. I’ve also removed the ABS pump as well from here because it was quite intrusive when you were off-road and braking. So, I’ve got rid of all the goubbins inside. They’re beneath this panel here and ran single lines from the master cylinder to the brake calipers, both the front and rear, too. Splash. So, yeah, I guess it’s more of an update video really. Still loving the bike. Still probably my favorite bike to ride out of all the ones I do have. Still the most comfortable seat I’ve ever sat on in my life. I just really enjoy riding it. Even in this terrible gray, horrible weather, you just take your ebike out, not annoy anybody like the Husqavana video that will be coming out soon. Just cruise about. Might look a bit silly with my hood like this as well, but my ears get cold if not. Anyway, let’s go back to sunnier times and watch me do some work on this bike. See you. Old belt versus new belt. The new belt is 1 mm thicker or wider. We could even machine the pulley, but I can’t do that. What I can do is have a go at sanding this belt down. 1 mil or maybe even half a mil would probably do it. Here’s the contraption that we’ve got. 2×72 sander. I’ve then made up a jig. Found this. I don’t know whether the long bit is going to be in the way or whether it’ll give me a straight edge to line the back of the belt up with whilst I’m grinding that, but either way, that’s what I had, so I used it. And it was easy to drill a hole into. I didn’t really fancy drilling metal. I should then hopefully be able to pull this through against this plate. And as I pull it through, obviously it’s quite tight at the minute. As I pull it through, it should then hopefully grind half a mill off. This belt was 25 quid for these. The original belts are over 200 quid. So, this is why I’m doing this. But if we try it this way, that might slide a bit better. Just set that up a little bit less. There we go. It seems quite smooth. The guide is good. Something to work against. It’s raising up slightly in the middle. Definitely feels like I’m taking something off though. The switch is in a bit of an inconvenient spot. So, it was 15 wide to begin with. So, yeah, taking off about half a mil, but yeah, I think it does need more. So, we’ll go again. [Music] My fingertips. I’m sure it is getting there, but slowly. I think I might do myself a favor. Not very sharp. That belt is a bit a bit used. Right, that felt quite successful. I was getting a good technique going there as well. That new belt has changed things. Let’s see if it fits into the pulley, but that could have saved me 200 quid. This was the issue on here. Obviously, this guide when it was wider, it wasn’t it couldn’t fit in there. It would bind up. But that’s going in. The rear is good cuz we haven’t got a a guide on the rear. Only on one side. You can see that little dirty spot here. That’s what we weren’t using before. So, we could have gone a bit wider on the rear if it wasn’t for the front. We’ve only got that little gap there to get the belt between. No, the belt wouldn’t fit through there. So, taking the swing arm off, which consists so far of this big bolt, which goes through there and threads into the swing arm directly, which is quite a good idea. Have these got a direction? Probably not. No. Put the belt over this massive pulley at the back. Push the piston back in. Whoa. Not forgetting the spacer. Callum. Oh. Okay. And the brake pad has just fell off. I guess they were due for replacement. Awesome. It’s on there. It’s fitted. Good things. Let’s see how it how long it lasts. It might last 5 minutes. The new pads have turned up. That’s what I’ve gone for. 26 quid, I think, for the front and the rears. So, not too bad. And they’ve got to be better than them. I managed to fit the rears without taking the caliper off as well, which is nice. Fit the new pads. And then we can then bleed the brake and hopefully uh clean that mess up. Look at that. just fell out of this bolt as I was undoing it. I think I probably got away lucky with them. That is some horrible looking brake fluid. It’s about three colors and then the black stuff at the bottom. So, what we’re left with looks a bit better. Top that up and then pull it through. While I’m at this stage, I’ll just clean out this rust from in here, I think, just to hopefully save it getting bad again. Hello. And then the orange go. It’s very fast, especially with me riding it. [Music] It’s a bit big for you. Well, one day. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Do you like reps? Yeah. Yeah. I’m happy. And the other one. Yeah. Look at the door. Look at this. Now a working brake. That’s good, isn’t it? [Music] It’s electric, this bike. It doesn’t make any noise. [Music] Do you like electric or do you like petrol? I like electric. You like electric? Yeah. Me, too. No, that’s petrol. Should we have a go on this one? This one is a mom. I don’t my ball here. Yeah, you can leave your ball there or that might roll away. And got it. Where did I boot it? Um on the bench. Huh? No, I don’t. Wow. I knew it. Well, you didn’t. I knew it. I’m the cleverest. Oh, no. I’m the chubby. The chubbiest. Got to get your helmet. Yeah. And my helmet. Helmet. Exactly. And it’s very quiet this bike, isn’t it? With with the new belt. Very quiet. Good brakes front and rear. Are you having fun? Yeah. Good stuff. Let’s go. So, how about that? There’s a bit of work that I’ve done on the bike. Nothing too much. Nothing too serious. It’s been pretty good to me in the 100 miles that I’ve well probably 150 miles that I’ve ridden it. to go home and check the chain sprockets to see how worn they are and to see how much life I can expect out of them. But going by the back one, I think we should be okay. That’s a lot of geese. So, we can see here the rear sprocket teeth are looking in pretty good, Nick. No visible wear on the teeth. Slight more grease on this side, but it’s certainly not wore it down anymore. So, even though the chain is running slightly over Yeah, slightly over this side. Seems to be working well. Front sprocket. Similar story really. You can still see the original anodizing, black anodizing on the tips of the teeth here and also on some of the grooves in here too. So, again, no adverse wear from memory. Looks more or less the same as when it went in. So, for a 12 lb sprocket, not bad at all. That should last for quite a while, actually. You can also see that the bike does get used in not very good conditions. The chain and sprockets are never that sort of clean. It doesn’t really get used on the road that much, so it will always wear them down a little bit quicker than usual. Anyway, I’ve taken the chain off and cleaned it in petrol, so it’s nice and cleanish. What I then do is put it in a bath of oil and we’ll probably leave it in there overnight. So, there we go. The world’s cheapest Zero FXS. The world’s dirtiest zero FXS. See you next time.
My bargain road legal electric motorcycle, a £1300 Zero FXS 6.5. Join me as i step back in time to fix the broken belt issues along with a few other modifications.
