Hey,

I’m a roadie come who has started riding more MTB since COVID. I’ve dabbled in a few XC events.

I always ride with power on my road bikes, and fancy adding to my MTB. I’ve been a bit put off by the cost, and the knowledge that I dont really need it.

I’ve got a 2021 Orange Clockwork Evo, with M8000 XT groupset.

The options as I see it are:

Crank arm – 4iiii or Stages, about £320 new. Advantages, light, lowest cost – do they still have reliability issues? Is second hand a bit risky?

Spider – seem to be a few about, would need a new crankset, probably cost more and add more weight

Pedals – too expensive.

It would also be a bonus if it also fitted my CX bike which has a Shimano road crankset, but unless I go pedals, or if MTB crank arms fit road cranksets, I dont think that will be possible?

Any thoughts appreciated! Thanks.

IMHO, keep the power meter on your road bike and use it as a training tool.
having power output on an MTB is way less useful as most likely it will be all over the show up and down, unless you are interested in how well your favourite fire road is going for you, then its not that useful? and an orange clockwork isn’t exactly an XC bike so even less likely to be putting out constant watts
IMHO

Have a single-sided 4iii on my Ripley after my trainer broke during one of the first lockdowns and no trainers were available. Works well and really reliable. Suits me as I do intervals on the trail so I repeat the climbs and then session the descents for as often as I need.

I have one on my road bike (4iii version) I would not bother putting one on my MTB, even if it was free.

Its hard enough sticking to a power zone on a road bike, on a MTB you would have to ride it on the road.

Any measurement will be just full of spikes, there is no way you can hold a steady power in an off road situation. Plus the added chance of the power meter getting broken by mud, dirt and crashing.

Keep the road bike for training, the MTB for fun.

I keep considering a power meter in order to science my riding up a bit more, but reading into it all has told me that it is just way to limiting in terms of if you’re in any way enjoying yourself on the trails (jumps, drops, rock gardens etc) you’ll be getting loads of spikes and/or breaking the damn thing.

The Garmin pedal reviews shared that essentially the data was useless for anything other than fire road type trails – which would rule out my riding as any ride I go on will get a mix of riding with some decent drops and/or rocky stuff.

I’ve resolved to investing more in some dedicated PT work and caving in to more time on my smart trainer.

Pure marathon work woth long climbs and fire road sections, then yes it would be useful, XCO, nah, it’s just flat with the odd recovery section per lap, rather like CX

If you definitely want one, I highly rate the Sigeyi power meter. GPLama gave it an excellent review. I mainly use mine for post race reviews, keeping on track of calories on long MTB training rides and pacing myself when I do road training rides on the MTB just before race season.

+1 on the sigeyi power meter. I have one on each mtb but as others have said not really a useful training tool. I use mine when doing endurance races to keep an eye on IF. They are as accurate as my elite direto turbo and I had an issue with one of mine which was replaced within 3 days and that’s from China!!.

I have a power metre (Quark) on road bike and power metre on my Turbo Levo. Useful on road bike but definitely a ‘because I can’ for MTB as impossible to use it for holding a certain power level. Can be useful over longer period to gauge effort for a particular route.

I’ve been riding MTB’s (XC) with PMs for about 10 years. I’ve got Stages, 4iiii and Quark. Had the Stages reliability issues with the earlier Gens but nothing now in long time – got an old XTR one on my winter single speed works fine. 4iiii is virtually the same – zero reliability issues and the Quark is probably the best in terms of battery life and auto calibrates.
Yeah you can ride to power on MTB’s as I said I’ve been doing for years – ride to a zone not an absolute number. As for ‘spikes’ or much higher peaks that’s what differentiates between road & MTB, it’s the ‘spikes/peaks’ you should see when riding XC. As with all rides as well if you use WKO you can ID discrepancies and adjust and Normalized Power is Normalized power regardless of road or MTB.

Thanks for replies, completely get the reasons why its pointless, partly why I dont want to spend much or havent done it yet.

Re Sigeyi – excuse my ignorance, does the spider convert a direct mount chainring into a 4 bolt chainring?

I see £273 from China or £330 from UK.

I bought a Chinese one from Amazon that came quick enough, looked an fitted well but didn’t work well with the bluetooth connection to Garmin.

Ended up with a 2inRotor dual sided powermeter, which although expensive it functions very nicely as a crank in its own right and looks funky too.

There’s something about seeing power numbers after battling up a long hill or pushing that bit harder than normal. Absolutely no real need for it on an mtb as said but, they are quite cool.

After using power data on teh turbo (accurate) and on teh road (less acurate at times..avio PM), I cashed up and got the Garmin XC pedals (dual sided..)
Which are great cos:
-i like the data, even if i’m not looking at it when riding, it’s interesting to see how hard i tried on certain sections
-having power for XC endurance races is useful..especially on long draggy bits, to ensure i’m not putitng in too much effort on those sections, or to guage how i’m doing
-as i can swap them on all bikes, it’s really useful to popping on the road/gravel bike
-i’m planning an off road everesting, so will deffo need to keep an eye on power data there

I think if you’re a bit of a stats nerd, then the data can be equal parts interesting and useful..

DrP