speed-o not reading
 

I bought a Bontrager Trip 1 speed-o last August, and now all of the sudden it wont read the speed/ miles. About a month ago it started acting up giving me funny readings, acting real weird I readjusted it and it worked for a while. Now it wont give me any kind of reading at all. I adjusted the sensor on the spoke up and down between the wheel speed sensor. Every thing seems clean....what am I missing???

Replace the batteries? Make sure spacing of the sensor on teh fork and the magnet on the wheel is correct so that sensor can "see" the magnet on each rotation.

Also, have you added any lights, other electronics, etc? Sometimes other things can interfere with the wireless computer signal.

Usually the sensor to magnet distance is the culprit, but you've already addressed that. Is it a wired model, with contacts between the computer and handlebar mount? Try cleaning the contacts on both the computer and mount. Or you may just have a faulty unit.

I do have lights, but it's not wireless, so that shouldn't be a problem.

He said he adjusted up-and-down but didn't mention side-to-side. The magnet needs to almost, but not quite, hit the sensor.

If it is wired, check for nicks in the wire and as suggest above, check all the contacts. You drip sweat on the computer very easily, and the contacts can get corroded.

Yes, the magnets don't have much of a "range" to trip the sensor. I recall from installing mine that they recommended something like 3-5mm clearance.
+1 on new batteries.

Moderate success i realigned everything and an erratic reading. I would spin the wheel it take a couple of seconds to give me feed back and i would bring it to a dead stop and it would take a few seconds to realize it. So tomorrow im going to try a new battery.

That is pretty much normal.

Last year we had to replace a pair of Trek Incite computers, on our bikes, with the newer Trek Trip models.
The Trip model has something of a lag time getting out of the "sleep" mode into active reading. When we unload the bikes from the car and get set up for a long ride I must go about 15 to 20 feet before the Trip computer "wakes up" and gives me a reading. Such was not the case with the older Incite model.

The back of the computer has two metal contacts that will rest on a pair of contacts in the mount. We sometimes have to wipe off the contacts to get reliable readings. Any film of oil or dirt on the contacts may give erratic readings.

The little plastic magnet tabs that go on a spoke are a bit iffy at times. I kept older, larger spoke magnets to use with the new computers. Not nearly as sensitive to position on the spoke relative to the position of the "trip" mounted on the fork. With the stronger magnet the distance between them is not as critical as with the smaller plastic encapsulated magnet trip.

I have Cateye's on all my bikes and those also have a second or two delay to update the display. Once in a while I will look down and see a speed that I know is way off from what I am riding at and then a moment later it will update to what it should be. New battery certainly won't hurt and is cheap.

I have made the habit of putting new batteries in my computers at the beginning of the year. That way I know they won't die on me mid year, and I start each one off with a mileage reset for the new year. Probably overkill, as the batteries should last several years minimum, but they are cheap.

battery contacts may need cleaning.

That's because it's computing the number of wheel revolutions over some period of time. Consequently you have to wait for the period of time to elapse.

Yes, normal ops. He explained it well. I didn't.

It takes about ten seconds after I give the wheel a good spin. When I first installed it, it would turn on immediately when walking my bike.

10 seconds seems a bit long. 2-3 seconds is normal on my computers. Maybe it's time for a new bike comp.

That's what I'm thinking, I bought it less than a year ago so hopefully I can get it replaced.

In my defence the instructions were drawn on a mag-n-doodle. Apperantly the two little prongs with the black squares on it were the mounting side. Lets try this one more time

Bike computer instructions are notoriously difficult to read. I think part of the problem (at least with the Cateye comps that I have) is that they are trying to include on one piece of paper instructions that can be used in all countries. My new Cateye Micro has two of them. One is a really hard to follow flowchart with mostly pictograms and the other is tiny text instructions unreadable by any eyes over 40. I did download a user guide from their web site, however, and it was very different from what was included with the box and much easier to follow.