2011 Zero XU Complete Upgrade 20KW Brushless Conversion - Ready to Ride

If you have been following along with me in my quest to upgrade my 2011 Zero XU Electric Motorcycle with pretty much a complete new electronics system, well the wait is over and it is now ready to ride. There are still a couple of small things I want to address but it is at least 95% done now! As a recap I installed a new QS165 50H Motor with a Fardriver 72890 Controller and this all came with a new speedometer, a complete wiring harness, and the left and right controls including the throttle.
There where a few challenges along the way, but I was expecting that to happen, and if anything things actually went better than I was expecting them to. Some of my concerns where making sure I got all the wiring correct, as I did need to integrate some of the old system in with the new, but not a lot. The only real electrical issue I came across was one wire that went to my speedometer needed to be swapped out to a different wire, this was to get my actual speed to register and also what gear I was in (Gears on an Electric Motorcycle are just power levels).
Mounting the motor went really well and I thought that was my biggest challenge, but I was able to mount the rear motor mounts using my foot peg holes with some spacers and so I only needed to fabricate the front mounts using some aluminium flat bar. I would say my the hardest part of this build was the gearing and chain, I did end up having to revert back to the original 61 tooth 420 sprocket and 420 chain as the new 428 sprocket and chain where just geared too high, which made made the acceleration weak, kind of like staring out in 4th gear. Now back to the original gear setup, I have good torque off the line and a nice top speed of around 120km/h.
I was expecting to get more amps to my controller and motor as my battery is rated at 200 amps nominal and 400 amps peak, but it seems anything over 250 amps shuts the battery BMS system down, resulting in having to restart the bike to get it going again (Turn it on and off). At 250 amps with the 72 volt battery that gives me 18kw of power, but when my battery is fully charged, it is actually sitting at 84 volts which gives me right around 25kw of power. That's 33.5 horsepower with a even more torque. So she rips along pretty nicely now with the upgrades.
So here is what we achieved with this full electronics upgrade:
- We went from the stock 4.8kw (6.4 horsepower) to 25kw (33.5 horsepower).
- We went from a top speed of 82 km/h (51 mph) to 120 km/h (75 mph).
- The battery was also upgraded before I got it from the 1.7kWh pack to a 7.2kWh pack, more than quadrupling the range. From around 40 to 161 kms (25 to 100 miles).
- With the electronics being all new, it will be super reliable.
All in all I am super happy, the upgraded 2011 Zero XU is a lot of fun to ride with lots of power at any speed and it handles like a dream. Now it's time to get my wife out on it so the two of us can go riding, her on the 2011 Zero XU and me on my 1993 Ducati 750SS.





