One of the worst feelings you can have is when something you just bought doesn't work.
You get all the joy, pride, and fun of that first experience, but then an overwhelming heartache of despair sets in as that thing becomes more or less a fancy brick. It's even worse when that fancy brick costs you thousands upon thousands of dollars, and a brick you regularly rely upon to get to work, go to the shops, or just live your everyday life.
And that's exactly what Redditor BackfireFox is experiencing thanks to his brand new LiveWire S2 Del Mar flashing every fault code known to man after only a few days of ownership. The issue? Seemingly an aftermarket theft deterent that the dealership installed themselves.
According to the post, BackfireFox purchase a new LiveWire S2 Del Mar from a dealership near them and splurged for an FIN GPS theft locator. But, after only a few miles, and visual inspection of the FIN GPS, it looked "hot-wired" to the electric motorcycle's battery.
"Bought from dealer they sold me on FIN GPS," says the post, adding, "They installed it wrong and it caused a whole host of electrical issues. Bike was in a constant state of on and could be ridden without key fob at all. As if it was hot wired. Check motor light was on 3 could barely get 50 miles at 55mph on a full charge."
And it gets worse from there.
After contacting the dealership and relaying the issues they were experiencing, BackfireFox reportedly tried to ride the bike the 119 miles from their home to the dealer to get it serviced. The bike only made it 45 miles before it died and they had to tow it back home. All of which was out of pocket.
A week after, the dealership picked up the bike and brought it in. However, according to the OP, no one told the LiveWire tech who was working on their bike what the issues were, nor relayed their texts to the mechanic. As such, the tech just "re-wired the FIN GPS system before diagnosing anything else." Furthermore, according to the OP, the "Service manager I was working with was on leave, so the other service manager didn’t even know what was wrong with it. They stated they could not replicate any of the issues I had."
Cut to two weeks after the bike was picked up, BackfireFox could then pick it up. But while riding home, they experienced that the EV was discharging its battery at an alarming rate. Running the bike at 55mph, all they'd get is 42 miles of range. That's a far cry from its claimed 70 miles of highway range, and 113 miles of city.
It took the OP two hours to charge and still didn't make it without flashing more error and fault codes on the bike's dash.
S2 Del Mar didn’t even last a month before the motor blew
byu/BackfireFox inElectricmotorcycles
Once they were home, they contacted the dealership, FIN, and LiveWire directly. And, according to the post, "No one knew what the codes were." None of the parties involved told the OP not to continue to ride it, so they did and kept getting the same 42 miles of range on a full battery.
But the worst was yet to come.
According to the post, the OP charged the bike up before a language class which was only three miles down the road. Even with the lower-than-advertised range, that should've been fine. Except it wasn't, as not two miles into the trek, "red flashing “MOTOR FAULT” came up on the dash."
To that end, they stated that "I lost all power in the middle of the road and costed as far as I could on momentum. Stuck in the middle of a road. Pushed the bike the final mile to my class called a towing service and waited. After class I went to my bike tried to turn it on and the screen was just flashing. Now it said charge fault then it went dead dead. Nothing."
They ended up getting a tow, but when they got it home, the bike wouldn't even take a charge. Nor when they replaced the 12V battery. "Couldn’t even get diagnostic data and codes to take pics of," they state.
As for conclusions, there isn't much of one. At least not yet. The OP goes on to state that the dealership has picked up the bike, but that they asked for a complete replacement at this point. The service folks told the OP that a manager would reach out due to the request, but there hasn't yet been an update to the post one way or another.
Lemon Lawing the bike was talked about in the post, but I'm not sure that's possible. Lemon Laws are designed for manufacturer defects of a vehicle, so it really depends on what's causing the problem with this specific motorcycle. If the likely culprit the aftermarket GPS, it wouldn't technically be considered under Lemon Law language. That said, it was the dealership that installed it and, if found to be the issue, it's on them to replace or fix the motorcycle.
We'll let you know what happens if the OP updates the story.
