Troubleshooting

This is an overview of troubleshooting Zero motorcycles and attached products.

This is not necessarily comprehensive.

It consists of what owners have observed and inferred over time.

We attempt to assemble the best generic advice available.

Scope

For now, we'll focus on just:

1. Identifying, categorizing, and describing symptoms.
2. Standardizing the language to describe symptoms so that Zero and dealer support people can understand you.
3. Suggesting possible hypotheses to consider.
4. Offering means to test hypotheses.

Theory

Read Wikipedia's Troubleshooting article for an overview of different aspects and methods:

• Half-splitting, AKA divide and conquer or basic block isolation, is the strategy of bisecting a system at a testable system boundary with a falsifiable expectation that can be used to tell whether the problem is upstream or downstream of the boundary.
• Intermittent symptoms are worth an extra consideration (depending on the risk) to attempt to create the simplest procedure which can induce the symptom reliably before diagnosis or describing for others.
• Multiple problems are a possibility to consider when attempting or evaluating fixes.

The Art Of Troubleshooting

This website is an excellent resource.

• The Right Questions, A Universal Troubleshooting Guide
• One Size Doesn't Fit All

Strategies

• The Universal Troubleshooting Recipe:
  1. Find the problem.
  2. Fix it.
• Change Just One Thing At A Time

  Minimalize actions so that the change produces information.

• Copy One That Works

  Reference a known-working bike to compare.

  Mind that models and years may have different operation in hardware, software, or in the bike's usage and wear over time.

Virtues

• Skepticism

Guide

Navigate the Symptoms.