"The 33"-Road Bike Racing - PowerTap wiggs out when it's cold

Any ideas? I'm not talking about real low temps, just low 30s or so. The computer doesn't register anything just gives me dashes across the watts and speed.

Dont ride in the cold


:P

Dont ride in the cold


:P

And lose all my HTFU points?

Didnt think about that.....


My PT does goofy stuff like this when the temp gets around or below 32. This winter I have been living with it /shrug.

same here. I roll out of the house, have readings, then after about 10 minutes, nothing but dashes. I figure that's the amount of time it takes for the ptap to cool down from the interior to exterior temps.

powertaps, if ever a more fickle piece of equipment was made ...

edit: friend with a quarq (spelling) has expressed similar experience. I havent researched it, but I suspect that strain guages are rendered less to ineffective by temperature.

Well shoot. We're training tomorrow and it's going to be cold. Back to the basics I guess.

Same here. It seems fine for a while that totally flips out. The power readings seem to jump all around, sometimes too high and other times too low. This tends to happen at or near freezing. I am hoping this goes away when the weather here in the Mid-Atlantic warms up a bit. It's going to be near 50 on Sunday, so . . . .

Hmm. Mine stays out in the garage all night, and I've had a dozen commutes this winter in the 27-32F range and the PT has been fine (with a slightly dimmed display). I've never had a cold-related drop.

Are you guys storing them inside overnight? I wonder if it doesn't like the big temp change.

same here. I roll out of the house, have readings, then after about 10 minutes, nothing but dashes. I figure that's the amount of time it takes for the ptap to cool down from the interior to exterior temps.

powertaps, if ever a more fickle piece of equipment was made ...

edit: friend with a quarq (spelling) has expressed similar experience. I havent researched it, but I suspect that strain guages are rendered less to ineffective by temperature.

My SRM has yet to crap out in the cold. I have to rezero it, but it doesn't seem to care how cold it is. Yet anyway.

Inside. But it took about 10 miles before it gave me the dashes. Then that's all she wrote. No data today to upload.

Hmm. Mine stays out in the garage all night, and I've had a dozen commutes this winter in the 27-32F range and the PT has been fine (with a slightly dimmed display). I've never had a cold-related drop.

Are you guys storing them inside overnight? I wonder if it doesn't like the big temp change.

could be it....

I leave my bike in the garage and have not had any problems with many days in the 20-35F range..

Move to Miami.

I keep all my bikes in the finished basement and had ridden my PT SL down to 24 degree with no issue but the dim display. My Quarq has been down to 26 with no problems at all.

Move to Miami.

Or LA :p

Are the hub batteries fresh? Cold batteries produce less power.
If you have an earlier SL wireless model, you may need the upgrade that fixes the dropping out problem. I got that done to mine and it's been completely reliable since.

+1 on the batteries.

There aren't any hills in LA.

There aren't any hills in LA.

false statement

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I'm thinking the batteries are to blame. And aren't all you guys in cold temps putting your bike outside before you ride to acclimate the strain gauges to the temperature change? If your head unit zero's the torque when the internal hub temp is 80 degrees, your readings an hour later when the hub is 20 degrees are going to be off.

First, replace your batteries on head unit and hub - make sure they're the proper lithium or silver oxide, not alkaline, versions. Second, put your wheel or your whole bike outside at least 30min or so before you're going to ride and re-zero the torque at that point.

Yeah. If my wife would let us move that far from her family on the East coast, I would move to LA over Miami.

LA's not that far from the east coast.

Yeah, Louisiana is only 750 miles from me. But the place is nasty humid in the summer.

false statement

</parody>

http://icanhascheezburger.files.wordpress.com/2007/01/270916539_5a9c0691ef.jpg

This has happened to me twice, both times new batteries solved the problem. They were getting low anyway (about 8 months of use both times) and the cold just pushed them over the edge.