Back to Heart Rate Training

Well everyone, I might be at the beginning of a tale of woe about how much PowerTap systems stink. After about 550 miles on the rollers and 100 miles outdoors of working properly, my new PowerTap SL has gone kablooey.

I hop on the rollers, and everything works fine for about five or ten minutes. Then the wattage starts jumping around briefly or for a couple minutes, then drops to zero, despite the transmission icon staying on solid. Cadence off the pedal and heart rate continue to register, but the clock and mileage stop, and wattage and speed show zero. Nadda. Nothing.

I have cleaned contacts, left the battery cover off for a day to "dry it out" despite there being no obvious moisture in the battery compartment, replaced all batteries, wiggled wires, reset torque, completed self-tests on the computer. It'd be easier to list the troubleshooting things I haven't done with this thing.

I have a second wiring harness and receiver for my TT bike. I will install that and run tests on that to rule out the wiring. Failing that, I'm trying to find someone locally with whom I can swap computers and hub long enough to see how they perform in an attempt to isolate the problem to one or the other. After that, it's very likely I'll have to send the entire thing back to Saris, and I'm not looking forward to that. There are many horror stories on the web about people who waited a very long time to get their fixed PowerTap back, despite the manufacturer claiming a ten-day turnaround.

I am not at all pleased that something that costs so much can go bad after a short time of mild use. I would expect this from a $20 cyclo-computer, not from something that costs a grand.

My short taste of training with power was enough to make me an addict. It's fantastic when it works. But now, I'm back to training with heart rate, and my motivation has taken a nose-dive.

Wish me luck, and buyers beware!