Elite Zumo Trainer

I’m having some issue with my new Zumo, I’m tempted to try swap it at Halfords as I think it must be faulty.

The power fluctuates quite a lot, even at a steady cadence, I also use ERG mode quite a lot, and with the power fluctuating so much ERG seems to be trying to over correct itself constantly and adding to the issue. I also find ERG mode to be very fast to react, faster than the trainer can react to power increase. So as soon as a sprint comes up, even a tame 500W sprint, then the turbo just increases intensity super high until it’s impossible to pedal.

Any suggestions?

I’ve updated the firmware, calibrated it while warmed up. I am using Zwift, I’ve tried ANT+ and BT but always the same.

This is my first direct drive turbo, but my previous smart wheel on turbo had none of these issues, maybe I should have stuck with that!

Following my post above, I took my Zumo back to Halfords today and swapped it for another one. The service was great, no faffing about or interrogation, I stated the problem to the guy at the cycling desk and he gave me another brand new boxed one.

Anyway, got back and set it up this evening and this one behaves much better, it holds a much steadier power and ERG works as expected. It also seems quieter too.

I’ll do a proper session at some point, but so far so good.

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Finally got an android device so I could upload the json file. It appears to have made no difference, still reading 20-30W below the pedals.

Hi @JoeX, i’m afraid to tell you that it took me about 7 goes before we managed to get my Zumo to within about 5W of my Quarq. Even then its a bit out at lower wattages but is now tighter at the higher end where it matters the most. At that point Elite gave up on me tbh and closed the case.
Feed the data back to Elite via your support ticket and see if they send you another JSON file.
Good luck.
Dave

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My zumo is far worse after i calibrated it.

My pedals are out of action at the moment so tried a VO2 workout with just the trainer. I turned the intensity down to 90% but was still unable to complete the second half of the workout.

I’ll be opening a support ticket as soon as I get my pedals back to assess the discrepancy.

I am posting tentatively because I just recalibrated, spin down, and did their power test - sending off two files for analysis again.

But afterwards the power values on TR (pedals) and Zwift (Zumo) we’re looking pretty similar around the 200W mark…so things are finally looking up!

Okay, it’s looking pretty close now - they sent these graphs, and a I’ve asked for them to quantify the difference, but I think I may be okay now…three months after buying the thing.

I might try a few TR workouts with just the Zumo paired and see how it goes.

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I hope mine gets that close!

Here are the results of my first elite power test…

No wonder I was struggling with my Vo2max intervals

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Ouch!!! That thing is trying to kill you man :astonished:

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How long did it take between sending the files to elite and them supplying a JSON file?

It’s been a couple of days for me now with no response.

A couple of days each time. Worth a chase?

So after a few goes elite have managed to get it to line up amazingly well over the range they ask to test… but it still diddled me out of 100w when i went for bit of a sprint. Might get back to them and see if they can tweek the top end a bit? It looks like even if they sorted it at 700w then it would probably still be 120w out at 1200w?

What would be good is if they implemented some kind of proper calibration via external power meter using the power meter link - they actually had something like that for my old arion smart rollers.

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Fair play to elite, I emailed them the above files and they supplied me with a further json file within 15mins to hopefully correct the under-reporting during the sprint.

I’ll report back once i’ve tried it.

I’ll obviously try to do an eyeballs out max effort too…not that i can actually sprint for toffee.

:rofl:Looking a lot better now tho isn’t it. Definitely worth doing.
Although annoyingly Evans are selling the Direto-X in the UK for £499 at the moment.
https://www.evanscycles.com/elite-direto-x-ots-interactive-trainer-EV379436

Oh yeah definitely worth doing but to be honest I’ve always been content with its performance with trainerroad powermatch on.

The fact it only cost me £325 from Halfords means it gets a bit of leeway.

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I gave up on mine and payed extra to get a Direto. Halfords Exchanged it with out question.

It is worth to have

Realised I never got back with my results after the most recent json update…

It’s within spec all the way up to ~1000w so i’m happy with that!

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Following on from my issues, I made a short video testing the differences, may be of interest to some :slight_smile:

Testing my Faulty Smart Turbo Trainer | ELITE Zumo - YouTube

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Following this video, I updated my new trainer to v 191 of the firmware. Then all the old issues returned. I contacted elite and they sent me the files to roll back to v190 and all is good again. There must be something wrong with v191, i suspect the first trainer was fine, the issue was I updated it as soon as I unboxed it.