I took a section of 26″ inner tube and slid it down the crank and over my Stages 1st Gen. Then sealed both ends with electrical tape. Since mine is Ultegra you wouldn’t notice. This was after destroying two in cold wet conditions.

£350 is a decent price, but is still like my powerpod. It’s the Physics geek in me above all else!

djglover – Member

I’ve been running a stages gen 1 with the typical battery issues. I did manage to get a good run out of it by drying inside but then a mildly moist ride set it back again. I have dried it out again and done the following

1: Put a roll of electrical tape on the inside of the door to push the battery against the -ive terminal
2: Pulled the negative terminal out with a knife
3: sealed around the seal with vaseline
4: wrapped the whole power meter unit to the crank with electrical tape

Have you tried contacting Stages and trying to get it swapped under warranty?

No, because I bought it second hand. This seems to have worked. though, I only have the back of the crank taped up BTW, Used it in the wet last night and full battery reading this morning.

[url=https://flic.kr/p/TajVwC]Untitled[/url] by danjwilkinson, on Flickr

Just pulled the trigger on the powerpod, Probikekit have it in a 24hr flash sale. It’s been £249 for yonks but today is down to £230 and they have a £25 off over £200 code and got another 7% off from topcashback, brings it down to £196. Its like going back in time before the £ was crap.

I’ve been running my 4iii for a couple of months now. Mainly off-road miles, at times through some serious slop.

So far it’s not missed a beat and the battery is still working….

My bodge failed on my stages, but as luck would have it the importer sent me a brand new one. Not bad considering I paid £330 for it second hand 🙂

I have another support ticket with Stages, they’ve asked me to clean with isopropyl and dry the unit indoors near a heat source. I explained that this has been done several times but after every wet ride I get the same issues.

Apparently water ingress is “extremely rare on a second generation unit through normal riding”

The next sentence I found a little worrying…”if you are pressure washing the meter, or somehow the compartment has prolonged exposure to the elements (including humid air) then that is an entirely different scenario”

I don’t pressure wash any of my bikes, but prolonged exposure to humid air…kept in a cold garage?

Anyway, I’m following their advice and it’s been cleaned and has been by the radiator for a week to dry out. Next sign of rain and I’ll test it out, I’m not optimistic.

but prolonged exposure to humid air

Its the UK, we only have humid air ffs…..

Well having thought I had a problem with my legs I think it’s actually a problem with my PM. Since the middle of last week my Vectors have gone from 55/45 (at worst) power balance to 60/40 (at best) and my power for effort/HR/RPE is well down. Wonder if it’s something to do with the hot weather we had, it was baking in my bike store.

So now to figure out how to recalibrate 😕

I had major issues with my G2 stages over winter – new battery every few weeks. No problems over Spring Summer so I think Stages are just not compatible with the damp British climate.

My first stages didn’t survive it’s first cold wet February ride. Pod fell off! They’ve improved the bonding since then.

Pod fell off!

😯

Took the misbehaving vectors off last night to give them a good clean and re-install to see if that sorted the problem. Noticed that the LHS must have taken quite a knock as it wasn’t on straight and the pod arm slightly bent inwards. No idea when or how this might have happened. Anyway re-installed and torqued up and all appears fine now with believable power numbers again 🙂

Waiting for the Favero Assioma. Heard only good things about the BePro pedals, and would like Bluetooth and easy no torque swapping. Cheaper than P1s, which have poor reliability. I’m planning on using single sided and will run with the TT Powerpod# for CdA estimation. Raced with the other PP on my road bike yesterday and the average and normalised power was almost identical to my team mates stages. This was on standard settings for drop bars.

Also considering a powertap in a Hed disc, as my Hed going back. The other solution is a Quark, but I like the original Dura Ace 7400 cranks too much.

#Calibrated at Hillingdon by riding 33 laps (50 km) – average power 207W. Bikecalculator predicted power (at 95% rolling resistance and 95% aero) 208W. These fine tunings reflect the tubeless Corsa Speeds and my arms up position.

Just had a code pop into my inbox for 20% off the 4iiii PM’s at ProBikeKit. Code is 4EYE20 and brings the 105 version down to 302 quid. Bargain.

Thanks for the heads up, just ordered one 😀

Waiting for the Favero Assioma.

FWIW I’ve had only good experiences with my BePro pedals, and wouldn’t hesitate to get Assiomas. The only slight drawbacks that I can see are that:

– Installing the BePro pedals was really very easy, but would be a slight faff to switch and swap. No torque wrench required, but a couple of bits (though I strongly believe that I could just do it by eye).
– The ‘pod’ doesn’t clear some shoes without cleat shims. I shaved one of my pairs of shoes slightly, the others were fine as-is.
– The battery life is not massive, and the flaps / micro USB cables are a bit fiddly.

The Assiomas improve on all of those. I can’t think of any good reason to get P1s over them.

Assiomas do look very good. I’ve got some warranty replacement P1s on the way, but wondering about flogging them, seems the reliability isn’t the best, and they’re out of warranty in 6 months time.

Just had a code pop into my inbox for 20% off the 4iiii PM’s at ProBikeKit. Code is 4EYE20 and brings the 105 version down to 302 quid. Bargain.

could have done with this a few months ago haha, the 4iiis seemed to be having stock shortages so I got a stages

Got my 4iiii from probikekit 24hrs after placingbthe order with free delivery

3 1/2 years after getting a stages, (x9’s & a 7900 dura ace) i seem to have developed my first issue, seems to have come after a firmware update on the garmin, stages kept dropping out, less than 30 days left on the warranty so its gone back

Does anyone know if the quarq xx1 eagle is retro-fitable to a standard xx1 eagle or even xx1 11 sped crankest? My 11 speed x01 crankset didn’t appear to have the correct fittings, but I haven’t laid my hands on an xx1.

https://www.powermeter24.com/de/quarq-sram-xx1-eagle-powermeter-spider-1032?number=PM24-16-10377

no, its 8 bolt, rather than the usual 3 – you need a prior xx1 powermeter for that to fit

no, its 8 bolt, rather than the usual 3 – you need a prior xx1 powermeter for that to fit

Why don’t quarq just make the power meter with the standard 3 bolt sram fixing then you could add the spider to xx1/x01/eagle etc.

It is a bit silly, quarq are part of sram, so you would think there could be some computability, I expect it would be good for sales.

Picked up an XT stages late last year. Had first ride on it on Saturday. Unsurprisingly the battery was flat 🙂

got my stages around january/february, been getting low battery warnings already

Got my warranty replacement (brand new boxed) set of P1s last week. Sadly, despite what I’d hoped, turbo training has not given me grand tour winning levels of power output, it just overstates things. Back to mediocrity now! Will do a comparison between the Tacx turbo and the P1s, country mile of difference between them I reckon!

Which Tacx turbo, out of interest?

I have a vague theory about my stages – which could be wrong.

I have 3 across my commuter, road and mtb. The commuter used the most lets sat 3 – 5 times a week road once a week and mtb once a fortnight at the moment.

The battery on the road runs down the quickest by far. Now this could be due to the fact these are longer rides, 3hr+ or it might be, randomly thinking, because it lives inside.

My theory is possibly the Bluetooth devices I have going on might be ‘waking’ up the powermeter? As it lives next to the mule bike on the wahoo kickr. And therefore its switching on and off much more than the other 2 stages which are stored in the garage / asgard.

Anyone else spot a trend with where the bike is located?

Which Tacx turbo, out of interest?

I couldn’t remember, it’s a Vortex, so about he cheapest one!

About batteries – I just got 16 x Panasonic CR2032’s on amazon for £3.

My 4iii seems so far to be matching the 100hrs battery duration, but at that price I’ve no issue changing the batteries – the phone app connects and shows battery level immediately pre/post ride for education as to where it is.

Sadly, despite what I’d hoped, turbo training has not given me grand tour winning levels of power output, it just overstates things

A few weeks ago I was warming up at the gym and decided to use an exercise bike (sorry no idea which one). According to it I was happily sitting at 400W during my warm up (FTP is ~300W). It did make we wonder how many people use it and decide the TDF riders aren’t trying very hard after all.

I guess the funny thing is that you don’t actually know which is right. Perhaps my P1s underread by 5%, and my Tacx overreads by 5%, 10% difference, but neither is actually better or worse.

I’m pretty confident the Vortex is more like 20% over reading though!

Would be pretty typical of a vortex sadly 😉

Yep, I never expected any less, just amused by it!

Think Nath’s Vortex was over reading similarly.

What is a typical inside / outside difference in power if it’s the same meter? My bepro’s read 15% higher for a hard effort outside (e.g a ten) than on the turbo (e.g. a 20 min ftp test). It’s even higher outside on a big hill, prob 20% diff. I understand outside is often higher, but that sounds like quite a divergence.

It’s interesting to me that you would expect pinning the number on, catching the minute man etc etc to give you a kick up the aris and add some watts. But mentally it actually feels the opposite way round to me – I can empty the tank dry, 100% arid nothing left, sat on the turbo staring at a number. This feels so much harder to achieve in the tens, but then my output is actually higher.

Im now using the same crank on both to road and turbo bike for comparative workouts.

At Gary – on a turbo you’re supported, theres no wind resitiance, no mental presence of danger etc. Your legs might be working the same but the stress on the rest of your body os higher outside. As long as youre calibrating against temp changes, its just that you make more effort.

I did quite a bit of testing of my Vortex against my Powertap hub and then Favero pedals. My Vortex is actually not too far out when calibrated well, but it’s very temperature sensitive. It’s effective calibration can shift by 5% or more within a hard 5 minute interval as it gets hotter. So for some kinds of workout you can get it to be roughly right for the bits that matter, but in general it’s not great. I’ve had mixed experiences with PowerMatch. I’m thinking of getting a Kickr, Neo or Direto for the winter…

About batteries – I just got 16 x Panasonic CR2032’s on amazon for £3.

link!!!

I just got 6 for £1.84 and now I feel ripped off!