The barrier to entry for adding a power meter to your bike has come down quite a bit.
Lately I've been getting a lot of power meter installation requests and inquiries.
Sometimes it's not a compact chainring
and sometimes it is.
If they made a 165mm, I probably would've gone for it myself.
The detailed impressions of this are the bike owner's privilege, so I'll skip that (laughs).
Today I want to mention something that caught my attention during setup.
When you open the battery case cover, you can see six little prongs extending out.
These contact the negative terminal of the button battery.
When you insert the battery, the positive terminal side faces outward,
but in that state there's no electrical connection yet.
The inside of the cover is aluminum, but
when you close the cover all the way
this window lights up red.
The inside of the cover is NOT anodized (if it were, it wouldn't conduct electricity).
The other day, a customer came by with a QUARQ that stopped showing cadence and power output on the very first day of use.
When they brought the bike in, the window wasn't lighting up even with the cover closed.
They'd already replaced the battery with a fresh one just to be sure.
Their cycle computer is a Garmin, but it had lost the wireless signal pairing.
It seemed unlikely to be a mechanical failure inside the Garmin or crank,
so I gently lifted the six prongs with an awl, put the battery back in, and closed the cover—and the window lit up red again. It was just a contact issue.
After re-pairing with the Garmin, it worked fine again.
I didn't do this time, but applying a thin layer of grease to the inside of the cover can help prevent rust.
If anyone experiences the same symptom, try checking the contact points first.
I'm sharing this information just in case.
Since it happened on the very first day of use, the customer was pretty bummed about the possibility of having to send it back to the manufacturer. So I was glad we got it working again.
Lately I've been getting a lot of power meter installation requests and inquiries.
Sometimes it's not a compact chainring
and sometimes it is.
If they made a 165mm, I probably would've gone for it myself.
The detailed impressions of this are the bike owner's privilege, so I'll skip that (laughs).
Today I want to mention something that caught my attention during setup.
When you open the battery case cover, you can see six little prongs extending out.
These contact the negative terminal of the button battery.
When you insert the battery, the positive terminal side faces outward,
but in that state there's no electrical connection yet.
The inside of the cover is aluminum, but
when you close the cover all the way
this window lights up red.
The inside of the cover is NOT anodized (if it were, it wouldn't conduct electricity).
The other day, a customer came by with a QUARQ that stopped showing cadence and power output on the very first day of use.
When they brought the bike in, the window wasn't lighting up even with the cover closed.
They'd already replaced the battery with a fresh one just to be sure.
Their cycle computer is a Garmin, but it had lost the wireless signal pairing.
It seemed unlikely to be a mechanical failure inside the Garmin or crank,
so I gently lifted the six prongs with an awl, put the battery back in, and closed the cover—and the window lit up red again. It was just a contact issue.
After re-pairing with the Garmin, it worked fine again.
I didn't do this time, but applying a thin layer of grease to the inside of the cover can help prevent rust.
If anyone experiences the same symptom, try checking the contact points first.
I'm sharing this information just in case.
Since it happened on the very first day of use, the customer was pretty bummed about the possibility of having to send it back to the manufacturer. So I was glad we got it working again.