I’m pretty much fed up with the left Stages on my road bike. I know all the debates that rage about consistency versus what the actual number is and all that jazz. Also that meters can be off by different amounts at different powers.
Before hunting for a replacement, wanted to ask, is there any current solution where I can tell one of these in the settings a power “offset” of some kind?
It’s just super annoying for outdoor workouts to totally miss zones, times in zones, and messup TSS due to this.
It’s consistent though. So if I could do something like that and offset, it would cure it. As it always reads the same.
I just don’t want to buy more stuff just to find another one that’s some large offset wrong.
The current one thought it was funny to tell me some 100 foot per mile elevation laps I was doing on the road bike could be done at 21mph on just 220w yesterday. The laps were all super consistent on power and the speed, so it is reading the same all the time. Just really wrong. I’m not that skinny. I wish.
I have never heard of that. You are asking for a manual power or calibration override by either a percentage or absolute wattage number, right? Does your Stages have a calibration feature? If so, then you could increase the calibration factor by your left/right power imbalance.
The real answer is simply buy a total power power meter. That will solve your problem without the tomfoolery. If you added a right crank to your Stages, that might fix it (assuming you can live with the Shimano crank issues, if you have Shimano). Or use another Quark, or PM pedals, or another dual-sided crank PM, etc.
I have never heard of that. You are asking for a manual power or calibration override by either a percentage or absolute wattage number, right? Does your Stages have a calibration feature? If so, then you could increase the calibration factor by your left/right power imbalance.
The real answer is simply buy a total power power meter. That will solve your problem without the tomfoolery. If you added a right crank to your Stages, that might fix it (assuming you can live with the Shimano crank issues, if you have Shimano). Or use another Quark, or PM pedals, or another dual-sided crank PM, etc.
I am fine with my Quarq on my TT bike. I was thinking going that way and keeping the Dura Ace rings on the road bike. I know they’ve had issues also, but maybe dual sided is the treat.
But yes, that’s the thing I was asking. Straight up allowing the user to alter either the zero cal OR allow a plus/minus power offset override.
I really don’t get why they don’t go ahead with such a thing. Maybe limit it to 5% max offset. But if they KNOW of the left/right imbalance or KNOW their meters typically read low…why not?
You can set tire diameter you have for speed. I realize that’s usually a calc in the head unit and not the sensor, but still.
Either way, I wouldn’t need to buy a dual sided if I could tell the meter my imbalance if I knew it.
I really don’t get why they don’t go ahead with such a thing. Maybe limit it to 5% max offset. But if they KNOW of the left/right imbalance or KNOW their meters typically read low…why not?My theory… if manufactures did this, then they would be straight-up acknowledging that single-sided PMs are not accurate. And that would diminish value. In summary, readings from a single-sided power meter are like The Pirate’s Code - more like a suggestion.
So you are saying that your power on your road bike is different from your tri bike and you are chalking that up 100% to single-sided Stages vs Quarq on the two bikes? Do you realize that even if you swapped the same PM back and forth between bikes your FTP would likely be different due to different positions? You also say you know different PMs can vary but you seem to want to ignore that in practice. And why are you doing any important workouts that you care about on your road bike. Anyway, your situation is no different than moving back and forth from trainer to road for people who have significant variation in trainer vs road FTP even on the same bike. You say you basically know the offset difference so adjust your FTP for workouts on the road bike. It might be a little tedious depending on how often you switch back and forth but it’s completely doable if you get that anxious about your metrics.
I’m pretty much fed up with the left Stages on my road bike. I know all the debates that rage about consistency versus what the actual number is and all that jazz. Also that meters can be off by different amounts at different powers.
Before hunting for a replacement, wanted to ask, is there any current solution where I can tell one of these in the settings a power “offset” of some kind?
It’s just super annoying for outdoor workouts to totally miss zones, times in zones, and messup TSS due to this.
It’s consistent though. So if I could do something like that and offset, it would cure it. As it always reads the same.
I just don’t want to buy more stuff just to find another one that’s some large offset wrong.
The current one thought it was funny to tell me some 100 foot per mile elevation laps I was doing on the road bike could be done at 21mph on just 220w yesterday. The laps were all super consistent on power and the speed, so it is reading the same all the time. Just really wrong. I’m not that skinny. I wish.
Not sure which of these you want (maybe neither)
-With the Favero you can add a percentage but not a “fixed” amount. If you set 10% and doing 200, you get 220, if doing 300 you get 330
-In GoldenCheetah you can add a fixed amount, not a percentage. If you set 10w and doing 200, you get 210w, if doing 300 you get 310w
So you are saying that your power on your road bike is different from your tri bike and you are chalking that up 100% to single-sided Stages vs Quarq on the two bikes? Do you realize that even if you swapped the same PM back and forth between bikes your FTP would likely be different due to different positions? You also say you know different PMs can vary but you seem to want to ignore that in practice. And why are you doing any important workouts that you care about on your road bike. Anyway, your situation is no different than moving back and forth from trainer to road for people who have significant variation in trainer vs road FTP even on the same bike. You say you basically know the offset difference so adjust your FTP for workouts on the road bike. It might be a little tedious depending on how often you switch back and forth but it’s completely doable if you get that anxious about your metrics.
No. You’re not reading this right and being pretty presumptive.
This is not about FTP or position, this is about the reading itself. This is if you put all three of my bikes on to the Kickr, the the meter on two of those bikes agrees close enough with the Kickr and each other. The third bike’s meter reads appreciably lower. As in, set the Kickr in erg to a workout that steps up 20w each minute and observe the power being shown on your gps for the bike’s meter and write them down. To know the difference.
The issue with outdoors is it’s a royal PIA to post-edit workout files to adjust the power to fit the training zones. 20w is enough to really toss Z4 and Z5 outdoors work. Then Trainingpeaks won’t tally the work “correctly” for work done with that bike and meter. Instead of getting 20min of Z5 work, you wind up with 20min of Z4 work in TP.
Hence, if I could offset it no post-editing would be necessary.
I’m not stupid enough to try to do the same exact power output being displayed on the bike that is “wrong” versus the bikes and Kickr that are “right”. Or to try to ride my TT bike at road bike powers. I know better than that, you adjust the workout. I’m saying when you track this as “time in zones” for training, that bike won’t tally up correctly unless you offset that bike’s meter OR you go to the trouble to edit and reupload every file to Trainingpeaks done with that bike.
And I’m also saying I shouldn’t have to post ride doctor files for that.
Unfortunately I don’t think this is possible, +1 for me to getting rid of the random number generator and getting another dual sided power meter. Not sure what crank you have, but if you keep an eye on the power2max site, you can find a pretty good deal on an NGeco when they’re having sales.
How about a set of pedals and swap them between bikes and forget about it.
Cross bike = spd
TT bike = low stack aero Speedplay zero
Road = spd-sl
There’s not really a combo of that which would fix that. But, I’m not opposed to spd-sl pedals. The holy grail would be Wahoo finally doing the Speedplay power pedals and I swap them from TT bike and the road bike.
You can adjust the calibration of the quarq in the way you describe, but you really wouldn’t want to do that - you’d be taking an ‘accurate’ measure and making it innacurate.
I spent years swapping the GXP quarq 3/4 times a week between my outdoor road and indoor trainer bike. One bolt, and easily less than 60 seconds to do. I’ve never got my head around how swapping pedals is easier than swapping a chainset power meter. (happy to hear, just seems double the bolts).
Just trying to get my head around the problem though (sorry, long long week at work, brain a bit fried and lots of info above). You do structured workouts on both indoor trainer and outdoor. When doing them on trainer you get the power from the Kickr, and outdoor you use the stages that reads low. The issue is that due to the stages reporting lower than the kickr (as tested on the trainer) when you are physically doing a z5 effort, it’s reported as a z4.
So if that’s the case, what you are also asking is if you could automatically set slightly different targets for the outdoor riding.
I had the other issue recently, where my TP and my Zwift had got out of step on the FTP. As a result the Zwift darn near killed me when I tried doing a structured workout that had been built in TP and then carried over to Zwift using the link to TP. So set your TP FTP at XXX watts, and your zwift at XXX+20w and that should be a useable workaround for you.
I’m pretty much fed up with the left Stages on my road bike. I know all the debates that rage about consistency versus what the actual number is and all that jazz. Also that meters can be off by different amounts at different powers.
Before hunting for a replacement, wanted to ask, is there any current solution where I can tell one of these in the settings a power “offset” of some kind?
It’s just super annoying for outdoor workouts to totally miss zones, times in zones, and messup TSS due to this.
It’s consistent though. So if I could do something like that and offset, it would cure it. As it always reads the same.
I just don’t want to buy more stuff just to find another one that’s some large offset wrong.
The current one thought it was funny to tell me some 100 foot per mile elevation laps I was doing on the road bike could be done at 21mph on just 220w yesterday. The laps were all super consistent on power and the speed, so it is reading the same all the time. Just really wrong. I’m not that skinny. I wish.
You can do this with Stages by setting the cranklength. https://www.trainerroad.com/forum/t/adjusting-reported-power-on-stages-power-meter/28240
Every 2.5mm change of cranklength alters the power reading by 1.5%
How about a set of pedals and swap them between bikes and forget about it.
Cross bike = spd
TT bike = low stack aero Speedplay zero
Road = spd-sl
There’s not really a combo of that which would fix that. But, I’m not opposed to spd-sl pedals. The holy grail would be Wahoo finally doing the Speedplay power pedals and I swap them from TT bike and the road bike.
Maybe I stick it out and do that.
Kind of the situation I am in. I have a P2Max on my TT bike. I use the Faveros on all other bikes and I “scaled” it to the P2Max to have the same numbers everywhere.
What I like about the Faveros is I can torque test them to see if they are accurate (they are). My P2Max reads slightly high. So I adjust my ETA when aero testing to get a better idea of true CDA
