Hi, after no luck with P1 pedals (3 sets failed) I am looking for a reliable power meter for my tt and road bike. My tt bike has a SRAM crannkset and my road bike Shimano. Any suggestions on a reliable power meter I can swap between the two bikes?
Powertap hub.
Wait for the new Garmin Vector Gen 3?
I spent a bunch of time, a couple months ago, trying to figure out how to best do a power meter for my tri bike and my road bike, the priority being the tribike on the trainer. The closest I got to a silver bullet was a powertap wheel I bought on ebay that I could swap between bikes. It’s only downside is that it wouldn’t be something to do a triathlon with.
It’s cool that TrainerRoad has a lot of trainer’s calibrated so that you can end up with power pretty easily on a stationary trainer.
Ultimately I put a power crank on the tribike so I’d have power info in races. Since the powertap wheel on ebay was cheap, the overall cost wasn’t so bad.
Well… I only see 4 options, and the best two have been called out already…
Garmin Vector 2 pedals (or wait for Vector 3)PowerTap HubConvert one of the bikes to a standard that matches the other, and then get a crank PMFigure out why you have a high failure rate with the P1 pedals to avoid future failures
Powertap hub, approx. 10 years old and still going strong.
Get a stages for each. They’re cheap and good quality. Problem solved
Hi, after no luck with P1 pedals (3 sets failed) I am looking for a reliable power meter for my tt and road bike. My tt bike has a SRAM crannkset and my road bike Shimano. Any suggestions on a reliable power meter I can swap between the two bikes?
Did you contact Saris in regards to your three failed sets of pedals. They have pretty good customer service and they might help you out with a price break for a hub if you are still interested in that brand. Having said all that, I own two of their hubs and have never had a problem with them. Have had one for about eight years and the second for about three years.
I’m very surprised regarding your failed pedals. That said, your next best option is to convert one of your bikes’ bottom brackets (pick: either 24mm Shimano or GXP) and get a crank-based power meter. I’m a fan of Power2Max but Quarq has a great reputation as well.
Go Pioneer add a Shimano crank to other bike. Get the full unit. You can split up and they can work independently or as 1 unit. Plus it’s extremely reliable
Powertap would be my suggestion assuming you can get away with one rear wheel. A standard aluminum hoop you can use on your road and tri bike for training, and slap a disc cover on it for racing tri/TTs. Or if you’re the type who likes to train on your race wheels, then slap a PT in the rear of your race wheels.
If you need more flexibility in your rear wheel choices between training, tri/TT, and road racing, then I would probably go crank based with Power2Max or Quarq.
Powertap would be my suggestion assuming you can get away with one rear wheel. A standard aluminum hoop you can use on your road and tri bike for training, and slap a disc cover on it for racing tri/TTs. Or if you’re the type who likes to train on your race wheels, then slap a PT in the rear of your race wheels.
Those are good ideas. When I was fighting this issue in the Spring, if I didn’t already have a disc wheel, the idea of a powertap wheel with a cover would have been ideal. I just couldn’t make myself walk away from my old friend, that 20yr old Zipp disc.
Agree re. Saris support.
My partner and I have gone through a couple sets of pedals each and we’ve had fairly prompt support each time. The last time we had a failure I made some noise about being over sending them back all the time (NZ based, purchased online…) and they shipped a replacement set and didn’t ask for the faulty set back.
We’ve not had any failures for 9 months or so now, I reckon I’ve worked out the problem we had. A pedal(s) would go dead, replace the battery and all good, but dead again in a day. So I reckon they suffer from water ingress and I’ve now taken to removing the pedals pre-washing, or putting the bikes on the car if it is potentially a wet journey. I’ve also applied a layer of grease on the battery cap threads to get another layer of protection from water ingress.
We’ve not had any problems since doing the above…
Powertap hubs are fairly lightweight now, and relatively bombproof. They are tried and true. That’s the direction that I would take.
Go Pioneer add a Shimano crank to other bike. Get the full unit. You can split up and they can work independently or as 1 unit. Plus it’s extremely reliable
I gotta try this. How do you do this? Do you need a Pioneer Head unit (computer) to split up the the crank arms?
Power tap. Mostly because I have had v little functioning problems in the 7 years I have had mine ( I now have 2 as have one on a set of race wheels ) but also because the customer service I received from Saris in the US when I did run into problems was excellent ( I do not reside in the US - ended up being sorted out by them due to the indifference, poor customer service and attitude of whoever it was in Australia I was trying to deal with ). Also swung me when purchasing my recent smart trainer so I bought a Cyclops Hammer rather than the Wahoo.
I had two Powertap wheels (racing and training) for seven years before switching to a Power2Max crank based PM last season. Both worked great, but I definitely prefer the P2M. The only thing I’ve had to do with it was change the battery once - pretty easy!
I’m actually considering getting a PowerPod for my road bike. It is a power meter that takes into account several parameters to get your power - just a thought.
thanks! Much appreciated.
Powertap hub or Quarq (put a GXP BB in the Shimano bike, reuse chainrings).
Personally Quark is so well priced and performs so well, I’d get two. It’s possible you could be able to just use a DZero spider on your SRAM bike.
Powertap hubs are uber good - mine, and others, preferred power meter for aero testing.