Thanks for this. Now being really stupid… Are we talking about regular baby oil from the store? And put a small amount inside the pedal and around the batteries?
Yup, regular baby oil. As long as everything is clean (no black dust), I just put a small drop on each side of each battery using a cocktail stick. No issues at all since I started doing that, previously was getting drop outs and spikes. Don’t really understand why they didn’t just go rechargeable and avoid the problem, would seem to make more sense for a component that needs to be highly waterproof but I’m sure they had their reasons.
Other issue which is less talked about but might put me off buying again is that the battery cap is quite prominent and is likely to be the first thing to hit the ground if you drop or crash the bike. It’s a metal cap screwed into a plastic body, and that body isn’t replaceable. Which means if you do impact the cap there’s a good chance you’ll wreck the screw threads in the body at which point you need a whole new pedal. Which is very nearly what happened to me - hit a patch of oil cornering on a wet day, went down, pedal hit ground, battery cap knocked askew and the threads were damaged enough that I was really struggling to get it back in straight, it kept getting cross-threaded. When Garmin told me I needed to replace the whole pedal I discovered the motivation to spend a couple of hours trying to re-thread it and eventually succeeded, and have had several battery changes since then with no problem. But if you do a lot of crit racing, or have a gravel bike, or your bike gets chucked around a lot while being transported, I would think twice about having such an expensive part that is so easily damaged by an impact. Could be the same applies to all power meter pedals, I don’t know how robust others are.
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Interesting. I made contact with a curb and once with the road pedaling though a turn, both hit the cap and I had no issues with threading. Guess I got lucky or didn’t hit them hard enough.
I had all the dropout issues and added a small piece of plastic under the battery connector closest to the crank. Just 0.5mm thick. No issues since. I know you shouldn’t have to and that Garmin should fix issue etc but the pedals are really good when working as they should. Really just an FYI.
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Maybe depends on the contact - my bike skidded along on it’s side so there would have been lateral forces on the cap to knock it askew. Sounds like yours were more direct impacts.
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Yep standard baby oil. (Not extracted from babies obviously).
It is a preventative measure. So clean stuff and the black dust may not reappear, but look anyway.
Its a mineral oil so I suspect any mineral oil will do. It is just that baby oil is easy to get hold of.
Had the same problem with dropouts and spikes, at least 10 times in an 1hr ride. Interestingly, my wahoo kickr did not sense the drop in power as I was able to ride on with the same resistance.
Did not have baby oil with me, but I took out the batteries, did a swipe with cotton buds and all’s good now.
I had similar issue with v3s - I had the battery cover replaced, and I wrap batteries in electrical tape - no problems at all.
Same issue. There are dozens of YouTube videos with “hacks” to try to make this $1k product work. I’m waiting to get my replacement battery covers in the mail to see if that fixes my issue. At the moment I’m not optimistic. Most of the comments I’ve seen online say that the battery cover replacements don’t actually do anything to fix the problem and you have to wedge cardboard or a cork into the pedal to make it work.
I have never bought a Garmin product that I didn’t have a problem with. They have very poor QC. Nothing works as advertised out of the box. It took 6-8 months of software patches for them to get the Vivoactive 3s close to the specs they promised on shipping.
(Also important point IMO: I bought my pedals about 6 weeks ago. So, to the people who are saying “They’ve probably worked out the kinks by now,” they haven’t)
FWIW, since getting the battery covers and baby oil trick, zero dropout issues in 16 months.
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When I first got my V3s, I had to use baby oil for the batteries not to rub together. I’ve now got version 3 of the battery door and in Garmin’s defence everything is now working flawlessly even without adding oil.
Still pretty shitty that they were released in this state and I know, I should probably have got the Assiomas, but hey at least I have a working product now and Garmin’s support has been pretty good.
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As an update, I received a new set of pedals. Seem to be working ok, but there is talk that using a CR1 battery (3v) rather than an LR44 or SR44 (1.5v x 2) also helps to mitigate some of the connection problems.
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Same here down in Tasmania, Australia. I recently had a hip resurfacing and purchased the Vecor 3s to specifically monitor my operated sides power vs non-operated side. Instead of this, i’ve suffered the same experience as you. I’ve asked for a full refund with zero interest in a replacement. That aside, how good is TrainerRoad!
I’ve been fairly lucky w mine. No major issues w the new caps. Only some dropouts. But I just installed the long 3v batteries. And they seem to be reading more consistently and no r pedal missing issues.
Honestly they seem to work better w my wahoo head unit than my edge 530 sometimes.
Wanted to link this thread here as it provides info on the other issue that can cause dropouts. I’ve been “lucky” enough to experience both, but my new set has had zero issues in three months. I thought Garmin handled my case well with minimal impact to my training and minimal inconvenience, unlike Wahoo.
Hey, just wanted to share my solve. I was just sent a new set of Vector 3’s by Garmin after my last set developed fretting (which I’d never heard of or been told about before) and, according to Garmin, because it was cross threaded. It was replaced free of charge. So this is my second set of V3’s and both have had tons of dropouts and spikes, but the solve is easy. And now that I know about the fretting and using mineral oil, I hope permanent.
You’ve heard it before–take a standard cardboard or plastic file folder, use a hole punch and punch out two circles–they should be about 0.015" thick–and use tweezers to gently wedge them under the h-shaped contact at the base of the battery compartment. Works like a charm. No more dropouts or spikes. I know others have their versions, but this one works. Then do the mineral oil thing and carefully thread the cap on. It won’t void your warranty because you’ll be smart enough to remove the shims should you ever have to send them back to Garmin or send Garmin pix of your battery compartment for warranty service. Cheers.
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Bought my Vector 3s 2 months ago. Worked perfectly for the first month and since then power spikes and drop out continually. Very disappointed as I had previously had Power tap G3 for years with nary a problem. Thanks for all the above suggestions and i’ll give them a try…
Had my Vector 3 pedals since they were launched, and not had too many issues (a few rides on bumpy gravel roads have given me a few weird power spikes), but even the original battery compartments never gave me any issues.
But, I recently stripped the thread in the right pedal (must have happened over time though, as it happened when removing the battery compartment and then got worse putting it back in with new batteries).
I contacted Garmin Support (Sweden) and they asked for a few photos and have said that they will send me a new pedal body. I would have preferred a new pair of pedals, but I suppose it’s better than a slap in the face. Just hoping that it is as easy to swap over as their maintenance video makes it look and that I find a 12 mm socket that fits in the pedal body too.
Anyone else had to do this when they’ve stripped the threads? And tips, or is it straight forward?
I haven’t done it myself, but I’ve watched, and yes, it’s very straightforward. But yes, you do need the right tools…
Prior to the replacement battery covers Garmin provided, i was getting around 20 hours on my V3 pedal batteries. With the new covers, I also purchased a longer extension cable for my ant+ PC dongle, so it is directly below the pedals. I also cleaned the black stuff off the batteries and terminals and I used grease instead of baby oil. Grease was recommended in a class I took on electrical contacts. The new batteries are currently at 47 hours. Note as well that when I did the last battery replacement, the black stuff was only present on one of the pedals. This makes me think getting good coverage of the grease is important.
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