Got myself a pair of XC100 a few weeks ago. Have maybe clocked 6 rides, 4 indoor with TR on a dumb trainer, and two outside rides. 5 first rides have all “felt” good, and it included both a ramp test and a Kolie Moore Prog 1 ride. First outside ride seemed normal too.
Went on another outside ride yesterday, and the power seems way high! Was riding at conversational pace for 1.5 hours, and supposedly my best 20min average power was 20% higher than my FTP!
Did not have access to a torque wrench, so installed pedals yesterday to “snug tight”, and fairly certain I changed the crank arm length too. Any ideas?
The only thing that immediately comes to mind would be to be sure you are calibrating them after the bike is outside for maybe 10 mins, but I’m guessing you have that all dialed in. I switch mine between bikes at least once a month and typically on my first trainer ride on that bike (different trainers too), the power can appear a little off on the first ride. With that said, I’ve compared them to both my Neo and KICKR Core and they typically match fairly close unless I am having signal interference or connection issues.
When I calibrate the offset reported on my edge 130+ is 0.0
The only thing I can think of, is that I did not use a torque wrench when installing the pedals. Just went by snug tight. It seems weird to me that it should affect power reading, but I have ordered the Park Tool pedal wrench torque adaptor just in case. So next step for me will be to torque them to spec, and try again.
Hi Just got these pedals, and can’t seem to figure out how to connect this pedal to the TR app. I have a google pixel, which does not support ANT+. I got the device to connect to Garmin Connect App immediately, but the TR isn’t connecting.
Should I be concerned at all?
Turn off all your devices, then start only the device you will use TR on and connect the pedals to TR and nothing else (don’t open Garmin connect). Did that work?
(I’m guessing they’re connected to something else so won’t connect to TR)
Thanks! That made the difference for me too!
A little weird that Garmin does not have clearer instructions on this. My garmin computer is programmed to ask me to calibrate at the start of the ride by default. But just like you, I have better luck if I wait 10 minutes or so into the ride. Which is a little annoying.
Chiming in with my experiences, which matches most of what people have said about making sure they are torqued down.
I received my XC200s about 10 days ago. I didn’t have a way to torque them to the recommended 34Nm when I first go them, so I set them hand tight plus a quarter turn with a pedal wrench. First two rides with the pedals installed as such resulted in low power numbers (based on perceived exertion plus comparing my efforts to past efforts on Strava segments).
Then I cranked them down pretty tightly and voila the power readings were much closer to what I have expected.
I did eventually get a 15mm crow’s foot tool so that I could torque to recommended specification and the numbers feel bang on.
One thing I have noticed is the disparity between my left and right leg. The Rally’s show a significant disparity in power production. In contrast, my Quarq D-zero on my road bike shows me nearly 50-50 balance, which I’ve always been suspicious of. I know I have an imbalance just based on various single leg exercises. My right leg is significantly stronger.
Update for knowledge base:
*This was very annoying, and not due to TR, but Wahoo’s support. * I figured out (with TR support) that my Kinetic 2 was overriding the power meter, and that I needed to calibrate. I will say the help text for calibration isn’t quite bold enough for a new user to figure it out, but that’s a minor quibble. Unpairing the Kinetic 2 was the solution, so now I basically plan to get a dumb trainer and sell this one.
Shout out to the team at TR, the chat was 10/10 good and kind. It was clearly mostly new user error.
The problem I ended up having was when I unlocked the capacity to ride outside with TR rides WITH power, which meant I needed to push my rides to my Wahoo Bolt. In effect, the Bolt couldn’t do this. This led down a long, long rabbit hole where I needed to delete maps off my device, reset the device, connect the bolt to my home wifi, then re-pair all the devices, including the Rally + my HRM. The email support from Wahoo was subpar, and even rude.
BUT! After this saga, I now have a set up power meters and was able to do my first attempt at an interval ride outside, which was the whole goal.
After using my Garmin XC100 rally PM for a little over a month, I am starting to lose faith in them. Which is a major problem, if I can’t trust the numbers in front of me, I am really just back to perceived exertion…
The issue for me, is that I have 1 set of pedals, that I like to swap between my road bike on the trainer, and my XC bike that I use outdoors. Having only one PM, I have to swap back and forth a few times a week, which is fine.
The problem I have, despite now using a torque wrench every time I install them, is that every once in a while, I experience a session with really wonky numbers. For the most part, it reads sky high.
Those instances are easy to ignore, but what about the rest of the sessions that it is seemingly reporting “good values”.
How can I trust that those values are ±1%?
How much is the stated accuracy of the PM reliant on a perfectly calibrated torque wrench?
How much does the type & amount of grease used affect how many turns before reaching 34Nm? And does that matter?
Lubrication on threads will affect (increase) the clamping force applied by the screw at a given torque. Torque is generally specified/measured as it is easy to do, but it only indirectly measures how much force the fastener is applying. If the Garmin’s are very sensitive to torque, they should specify the torque and if the threads should be lubricated or not.
That said, as long as you are consistent with this I don’t think it explains the variability in the results you are seeing. Reduced Torque with Lubricated Bolts. Bolt Lubricant and Torque: A Comprehensive Guide – Hex Technology
If you have the dual sided, you may find that when the numbers are off it is just 1 pedal, so you can likely have more confidence in numbers where left/right are similar.
Have you reached out to Garmin Support yet? Just curious. So far my pedals are consistent and I switch bikes with them 1-2 times per month. My first ride on them is often a little “wonky.” I lightly grease and torque to spec. After a change I always reset install angles and I calibrate every ride. I get some drift from my KICKR Core over time, but that is typically remedied by a spin down on my trainer. Overall I am still seeing decent data with the exception of some dropped dynamics (as seen on my Garmin Edge 1030) occasionally. It seems I lose the live data but it appears to populate in Garmin Connect later. I have not sent the data to Garmin since I rarely pay attention that data and I’ve found it more of a problem in environments with likely signal noise (hotel).
Hope you get it sorted and please share what Garmin Support tells ya.
Exactly. That’s what I am talking about, the clamping force. Garmin do call for cleaning of the threads and applying grease. They “recommend” a torque of 34Nm, but I cannot see them stating it as being important for the PMs accuracy or not. I guess my point is, if it really is this sensitive to torque, then it’s hard to live with.
For example, if I am doing threshold intervals one day, and I find them “harder than usual”, it’s easy to start blaming the PM in the back of my mind etc.
If I have a good day, chalking it up to the PM and so on. Just hard to put any trust in them.
I have not reached out yet, but that sounds like a good idea!
I am unaware of what “resetting the angles” mean?
My procedure has just been:
Clean & Regrease
Torque to spec.
Set crank length
calibrate before ride
stop & calibrate 10 min into ride
Garmin’s tech doesn’t even use a torque wrench! He does recommend doing a few hard sprints before calibrating though. So will do that next! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emkwbcoOkFc
I’ve lost faith in mine already - coming from an infocrank - the power on the xc100s are all over the place, and I don’t even move the pedals from bike to bike… adding to that I broke a pedal body - it wasn’t even a bad pedal strike. Although Garmin replaced it for free. I’d go to crank based but I’d like to keep pedal based as I can put it on rental bikes when I travel in the summer - and as an SPD pedal its my only option really… Mine reads about 10ish watts lower than my infocrank
Ok. I did not know that sorry. I was just sharing how I run my RallyXC 200s and my experience with them so far. Good luck with them. Hope it gets sorted out.
Resetting install angles is a setting in the Garmin head unit (mine is an Edge 1030). I do not believe it is required when you change cranksets but recommended as I understand it (after reading the review by @dcrainmaker).
