Brammo Owners Forum

As I reported some time ago:

A few days ago, my bike stopped charging. I finally opened the bike up a bit and discovered that there was a blown fuse.

After a fairly long discussion with the bike dealership, they admitted that Polaris is no longer willing to stand by their electric bikes.

I don't believe that I did anything in particular to cause the original problem with the bike. I would ride it and recharge it every day. Then one day, preforming the normal recharge cycle destroyed the pretty much all of the recharging system. This is equivalent to having your bike catch fire while you refuel it.

Now I'm left with a dilemma. I could pay $4000 and get the bike repaired, or I could pay a lot less and tow the bike to a scrap yard.

If I get the bike repaired, the dealership is not prepared to offer any guarantee that the original problem won't happen again, so I may end up with another $4000 repair bill in the near future. If I get it repaired, I could try to trade it in for a Zero.

The alternative is to tow it to a scrap yard.

What would you do?

It should be fairly obvious that I'm rather disappointed in Brammo. Either their design wasn't built with sufficient fail safes to prevent this catastrophic outcome, or they didn't build the recharge system to specifications. Since they sold their bikes to Victory, there is nothing that Brammo can legally do to help me, and since Victory itself if going out of business, my Brammo Empulse pretty much has no future.

(Note that the dealership is going to start charging me storage fees because they are tired of seeing that bike on their lot, so I can't think about this for too long.)

Has anybody has to change the sprockets on their Empulse?

Somehow, my rear sprocket has lost a number to teeth! I would like to replace it, along with the chain, and while I'm at it, I would also like to replace the front sprocket. I got these part numbers from Brammo:

• Front: PINION FOR CHAIN 520 14T B24564736
• Rear: 2013, 14, 14.5 SPROCKET, 38T, 520 B23218357

(the B at the front of the part number denotes “Brammo” for Victory Dealer to reference)

I also got a list of dealerships to call, but so far, they have pretty much all said that they (Victory) don't stock parts for old Brammo bikes. The only stock parts from 2016 Victory Empulse bikes.

This website looks like it can supply the (some) parts for the 2016 Vicotry Empulse, but they don't appear to have the front sprocket in stock:
http://www.polarispartspitstop.com/oemparts/a/vic/5678f88787a86611bc5d1603/final-drive-chain-and-sprockets
I don't even know if the 2016 sprockets will fit a 2013 bike.

There was a discussion a while back about what front sprocket would best fit an Empulse, but I didn't see a final word as to how well the replacement fit the bike.

Does anybody know what will fit a 2013 Empulse?

Has anybody else had problems with condensation in their console/dash/tachometer (what are we calling that thing anyway?)
If so, what are recommended solutions for preventing that from happening?

This is what vtbrammorider said about the issue:

I also had an issue with my speedo/tach assembly getting condensation in it.  I have since dried it and sealed it with silicone and haven't had any water ingress.

It's been a rather constant problem for me. Florida is very humid, and I can see how changing atmospheric pressure may cause humid air to get sucked into the console. I suspect that with the very heavy rain we get in Florida, some water may be seeping through the joint between the front and back parts of the console.
Initially I only saw the problem in the winter, where the cold temperatures cause the humidity in the console to condense. It got so bad that I couldn't read the LCD, and Brammo actually replaced the console for me.
The new console worked great for a long time, but after I got it back from the dealership (they were fixing a oil leak), the console had very heavy condensation is it (to the point that there were pools of water at the bottom of the tachometer display), and now the tachometer and LCD have completely failed.

When I get another replacement console, I want to make sure that this one doesn't have any more problems, so I'm looking for advice as to the best way to seal it.

• Do I just need to seal the joints, or should I seal the edge between the case and the plastic windows?
• What should I use? Tape? Silicone?
• Are the buttons well sealed enough?
• Do I need to leave some holes to allow for atmospheric changes? If so, then how to I prevent the console "breathing in" the humidity?
• How well sealed is the connector?

Has anybody replaced the chain on their Empulse yet?

My chain has a rather bad kink in it, and no amount of lube is improving the situation. It's so bad that there is a 1/8 inch (~3 mm) gap between the bad link and the rear sprocket. I can even feel a nudge every time the chain goes around, and it's making a bit of a grinding noise.

It's a bit of a bummer considering I have only about 12k on that chain, while my other bike has a heck of a lot more miles and no chain problems.

So, any words of wisdom about replacing the chain?

Hello Everybody!

I've been seeing some error codes on my bike and thought that it would be interesting to gather information about the error codes that people have been seeing.

Eventually, I would like to make a table on the Wiki that has this information. This is the kind of thing that I'm looking for:

Bike: Empulse R 2013 (purchased in Feb 2013)
Software: V1.2 (<-- I can't remember the correct number right now, so this is probably bogus. This would be the version number that show up when you boot up the bike. Also, I don't know if that version number is for the dashboard software, or for all of the software on the bike. In any case, that's the only version number that's easy to get, and it's better than nothing.)

Error: B9
Manual says: This is not a listed error. However, B errors are related to the Battery.
Cause: Uncertain. Probably excessive water.
Affects on the bike: None apparent
Solution: Ignore it.
Details: This often shows up after riding through heavy rain. It will stay on, sometimes for weeks, but will eventually only show intermittently and then finally go away. Brammo says that this error can be ignored. They even said that they would stop reporting it in future software upgrades.

Error: V58
Manual says: VCU +12V Out of Spec
Cause: Unknown.
Affects on the bike: None apparent
Solution: Unknown. Brammo advised me to take the bike to the dealership, but I've not been able to do that yet.
Details: This started showing up after about 10,000 miles. When it shows up, it's intermittent. It appears to show up more frequently when the bike has less charge. Or perhaps when I push the bike hard. Brammo advised me to take the bike to the dealership.

Error: (I can't recall the code)
Manual says:
Cause: Unknown.
Affects on the bike: The bike stops.
Solution: Toggle the cut off switch and press the start button to restart the bike.
Details: I get this when repeatedly gently tap the throttle while the bike is stopped. This can happen when I'm maneuvering the bike in a parking lot; I just want to move forwards and backwards about a foot each way, so I gently tap the throttle. If I do this enough, the bike will sometimes give that error and then stop.


So, what errors have you seen? How did that affect the bike? What did you do to remedy the problem?

(By the way, I feel like a bit of a heel - I haven't been on this forum much since I got my Empulse, and here I am just when I'm having a problem with my bike.)
 

I just got a B9 error this morning. It's the first time that I got an error that didn't just go away after restarting a few times. I sent an email with logs to Brammo. Let's see what they say.

In the mean time, I'm curious to learn about what errors people have seen on their bikes and how (if) they were able to resolve them.

E.g.
I very frequently get an S54 (High battery) error after turning on the bike when it's just been charging.
Once I got an S100 (undocumented) error when I tried to change from regular to sport mode and then quickly accelerate.  (That's what I get for trying to show off, eh?) My guess is that the computer was still trying to switch modes when I hit the throttle.
For both of those errors, restarting the bike resolved the issue.

Here's a graph I made using log data that plots battery use vs speed. There are several sets of data for several days of recordings.



The full details are here.

Notes:

• The "Freeze" data are from when I tried to make my 77 mile run in freezing temperatures (There are two because I accidentally hit the kill switch on the way).
• 0% is when I arriverd with with 0% left (Melbourne to Orlando)
• 15% is when I arrived with 15% left (Orlando to Melbourne)
• On the last two (3/11, 3/12), I had to stop on the way the charge
• The SoC drop per miles appears to get worse as the battery gets older.
• The scale of the SoC axis is wrong. Multiply everything by 100 to get the correct %drop per mile. Oops!

Battery degradation over time is to be expected, with Brammo stating %80 of original capacity after 1500 cycles. I'm at way less than 100 cycles, but the battery seems to have a marked drop in capacity compared to when it was new.

I sent the logs over to Brammo to see if they think the degradation is normal, but I haven't heard back from them yet.

Some notes about how I got that data (if anybody is interested).
I'm using Flar's logging code to extract the data. Every time the battery State of Charge (SoC) drops by about 1%, I see how far the bike has traveled and calculate the average speed over that 1% drop. Using the SoC and distance, I can calculate the SoC per mile. I round the speed to the nearest whole MPH, and average all of the SoC drops for that speed.

Will anybody on this forum be attending bike week in Daytona this year (with their bikes)?

http://www.daytonachamber.com/daytonabikeweek/

Dates:
March 8 - March 17

Location:
Daytona Beach

Sadly, there are not a whole lot of viable Level 2 charging options over in Daytona. Buffalo Wild Wings has a free charger, and there are a couple more at the Country Inn. Nissan dealerships generally refuse to help anybody. I suppose there's always the level 1 charging option.