I’m about 50 days into Yarbo ownership. As with many others, I question what made me voluntarily sojourn on this life side-quest, but here I am. I’m in the not so exclusive group of people running into these errors with “blocked” wheels. However, my case may be slightly different.
I recently had a full wheel lock-up. Yarbo quickly sent me a replacement left drive module as soon as I was able to get the right support people to look at the ticket. (Pro tip: Use Gemini to tell you everything that support will ask you for so you can give it to them in your initial ticket submission and save yourself a week going back and forth with support.) I replaced the full left drive module including motor, gearbox, track, etc. It took me a few hours, but when I was done, it seemed to be working fine. I was happy to do the work as my Yarbo is essentially new and I didn’t want a refurbished core that had all the damage of the previous owner(s).
I closed my ticket too soon as the brand new left drive module started overheating. It’s demonstrating the same high power consumption symptoms and left wheel blocked errors that led to the full lock-up. Support is telling me to take a video to show if the wheel can be physically moved or not. I already know the answer to that is yes, it can be moved because it’s not a full lockup like I experienced before, it’s a thermal shutdown condition due to some unknown source. Either the new motor is bad, or the gearbox is creating excessive friction making the motor work too hard. In either case, it’s shutting itself down and I’m getting limited use from each charge. Given the cost of the battery and the cost associated with each charge cycle, getting 45 minutes of mowing from a charge makes cost of ownership very high.
With all this in mind, can anyone tell me the best path forward to get resolution? I have a large lawn and with Yarbo running perfectly, it takes 3 days to mow once. Every day this thing is down increases the number of times that I need to mow. Help!
I did some additional diagnostics on my own and I think the issue is the track rubbing on the metal frame.
Turning the left track was more difficult than turning the right track (by hand). I checked the bearings and bushings and everything was spinning freely.
When I elevate the Yarbo and remove the left tread, both motors consume the same amount of power.
The left tread shows a band about 1/2" wide on the inside where I can see that it’s been rubbing. Also, on that same edge, all of the thin rubber leftover from the molding process has rubbed off.
My assessment could be completely wrong and it may be because I have the Yarbo elevated and it may go back to abnormal power consumption when the weight of the Yarbo is back. In any case, I thought I would update the case to help others out.
Attaching photo of area with excessive rubbing. Keep in mind that this has probably only had 5 hours of runtime on this new tread.
That’s an interesting find and first I’ve heard of something like this. Is it rubbing against the bottom track plate or somewhere else? The bottom plate is very flexible and does tend to get bent. If it is rubbing on this, perhaps just need to bend it back?
The rigid oblong plate that blocks grass from coming in the back side of the tracks. Seems like only a few areas near the drive cog. Since then I put a track on from the original module and power consumption seemed to go back to normal. It got 3.6% I to the plan and completely locked up like it was before they replaced the left track module.
They should give people a test to see if they have the tolerance for issues and self drive to find your own answers before prospective customers are allowed to buy. Still under 60 days of ownership and I was counting on reaping the rewards of ownership vs continuing to wait for things to stabilize.
I called today and got through after 8 or 10 attempts. I was told my ticket would be assigned to a tech. Only took 3 days, two videos, two photos and 10 updates. Still not a single post from support, but they said I should hear within 48 hours. sigh
I’m sorry to hear about the issue and the frustration it’s caused. We’ve recently received a high volume of support tickets, so response times may be slower than usual.
I’ve checked your ticket in our system, and I can confirm that it has already been assigned to a technician for review. Please kindly allow some time for us to investigate before we reach a conclusion.
