Brammo Owners Forum

21,468 miles. Single owner. Title in hand.

Does not charge. I am pretty sure it is just the well-known wiring harness issue as it happened after I got a new job and started level II charging at work, but I tried hard-wiring around the offending harness and it still would not charge. Could be that I'm not a mechanic and the bike doesn't like my bodged fix, or it could be something else is more broken. None of the local shops will touch it. I replaced it with a Zero and now I just want the space in my garage back.

It stopped charging in April 2018, and the bike has been sitting ever since. I limped it home from work, and parked it with ~25% SOC. It does turn on. I am confident it would move if you wanted to ride it. That said, it shows 0% SOC, and the battery is likely far out of balance.

Front tire has very few miles, as do the chain and sprockets. I have a second set of new, never installed, sprockets that will go with the bike. One of the fairing bolts is cross-threaded in the frame, and one of the front turn signals has a broken outer lens (from me being careless in the garage). I did tip it over once in a parking lot when I lost my footing getting on, otherwise it has never been down. The front fender has holes where I had extra LED lights mounted (they have been transferred to the Zero). Also has heated grips installed.

I bought the bike to ride, and I did in almost all weather conditions for ~10 mo/year in Chicagoland. It's dirty and well loved. I am disappointed I didn't get more use out of it.

Local pickup only. The bike is somewhat taken apart, and I assume anyone interested would prefer it that way for inspection, etc.

I'm not on the forum very often. E-mail is best:
sean dot seamon at gmail dot com

The forum is not letting me link to the pics directly on my FB account, but you can see pics here:
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=6845426&sk=media_set&set=a.10104795231120259&type=3&uploaded=4

Mine just stopped charging, too. I just recently started charging more often at level II, so my habits fit the description of the problem.

It has been sporadic on displaying charging amperage for a few weeks (although still charging), so I suspect that was a precursor.

I'll post up what I find.

Wow, that's crazy that the packs seem to be struggling as they age. Mine has just over 20k miles, and was delivered to me in February 2013. I'd have more miles, but two fully riding seasons were cut out thanks to injury, and then the bike sitting at the dealer for a summer.

I am pretty aware of battery maintenance fundamentals. I used to work in the Navy's battery program (I got to terminate the contract for the ASDS battery after that Li Ion burned down the $3B sub) and now I work at Argonne National Lab, DOE's lead battery lab (home of Michael Thackeray and Khalil Amine, among others). I'm no scientist or engineer, but I have gotten to interact with some of the world's smartest minds in batteries in both research and applied settings. I currently authorize work for private companies who want to use Argonne to solve their problems which means I see the problems battery companies are having. In other words, I'm not abusing the batteries beyond riding in normal conditions for Chicago.

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess the Chinese cells used in our packs did not have the most consistent build quality. I wonder if Polaris even knows how to check for good cells? I hope the bad module gets replaced, in any case!

I had heard it is ok to keep it charged to 100% even for long periods of time.

That is not true. Batteries are essentially a big chemical reaction. When the battery is fully charged, it has a lot of energy stored. Think of it like a balloon with air that is constantly trying to escape. When the battery is sitting with a lot of energy, some of it is going to find places to escape, and in a battery that is usually reacting with things that weren't meant to have a reaction - usually the electrolyte or the structure of one of the electrodes. These mistaken chemical reactions are almost always irreversible. The reason it is better to store the battery at a partial charge is that these freak reactions happen exponentially less. As Siai said, the actual proper SOC to store at is up for debate.

On the other hand, the absolute worst thing you can do to a Li Ion battery is run it completely dead. In that case the copper in the anode gets exposed and actually becomes active material. (it becomes a "copper ion" battery, sort of.) Once enough copper is reacted, the internal resistance increases and the ability for the cell to produce current decreases. That is also irreversible. This happening once is enough to brick the battery.

So, if you have an option between storing at full charge or empty, full charge is better. In the winter I bring mine down to 80% and then check it every month or two.

I lost all of last riding season with the bike sitting at a dealer. I took it back after four months, unfixed. Dealer said it would be covered under warranty, but could not ever get the support from Polaris to do the repair. The problem still pops up, but the bike is rideable, so I keep riding. I figure I'll bring it back to the dealer this fall since the warranty expires in February.

Good luck fixing your problem, CAT.

I'm needing to replace my chain and sprockets. Has anyone had any luck sourcing a front sprocket?

If not, I may look in to having a machine shop make a batch...

Check all your connections around the headlight. I seem to remember something similar happen to mine, and it was just a loose connection at a plug. Now I am experiencing intermittent front turn signal function...the 12v connections are not particularly good on the Empulses.

The problem was Harley branded the box as a "street performance tuner," so it's hard to argue that it is only for off-road use. Plus they kept the full factory warranty after the box was installed.

That is a pretty big fine. Their stock price hasn't been affected yet...