Help! Did I just ruin my Elite Direto?

[elvis]

Hello everyone,

I URGENTLY need your help. I recently moved to the US and brought my elite Direto with me. Unfortunately, I forgot the converter for the plug at the office today, so I looked for a charger with the same size in the garage. I found one but forgot to check the voltage…I know, EXTREMELY stupid!!! I attached the charger and left the room to fill up the bottles. When I came back the trainer smelt burnt. I immediately unplugged the charger, went to hardware store to get a converter and checked whether the trainer still works. Sadly this is not the case. The lights for Ant+ and Bluetooth light up in blue but the resistance does not work anymore…light does not blink in red anymore. Has anyone had this problem, what did you do and can I fix this myself? I will call Elite first thing in the morning tomorrow…until then I am basically stuck with a dumb trainer and my Favero Assioma pedals for power.

I am thankful for any help!! I hope I can open up the trainer and simply fuse a broken cable!!!

Cheers,

Elias

[iamholland]

Most likely yes. They probably don’t have another voltage regulation stage inside the trainer so you probably fried the transistors and probably blew some capacitors in the circuit board. Even if they did have another stage, there’s only so much tolerance.

How far off were the voltages? Also some power supplies are AC to AC instead of AC to DC.

[DaveWh]

Most chargers can work fine on 230 and 120V AC input.

The charger you used may have had too high an output for the Direto. Read the small print on both the Direto charger and the charger you used. What does it say for:

• AC input voltage
• DC output voltage
• DC output current

My guess is output voltage and current were too high on the charger you used

[elvis]

Here are two images of the chargers I used. I will call elite today and see what they say

[DaveWh]

The top one is 24V output. I think the Direto is the lower one with 12V. Yep. Likely fried some electronic component in the Direto.

[mcneese.chad]

That’s why I use a silver sharpie and label all my power supplies with the product name or model when I get them. Impossible to tell what matches since the power supplies are usually not made and labeled by the main product maker.

Sorry for your likely loss.

[elvis]

Yes, the top one is the one I used instead of the 12V. Do you have any recommendations for a replacement trainer? Moosejaw has the new diretto for 650usd.

[RobertSims]

Contact manufacturer and play dump…say just stopped working - what got to lose?

[mcneese.chad]

Contact manufacturer and play dump [dumb]

what got to lose?

• Ethics… that is what is lost with this suggestion.

Contacting the manufacturer with admission of the mistake seems like the right / fair/ ethical way to approach. This is clearly “user error” and attempting to game the manufacturer with dishonesty (or by withholding info) is just shady to me.

Perhaps they will recognize the human aspect (openness for error, and potential empathy for the situation) will lead them to offer some discounted replacement. Who knows, but it seems being honest is better to me.

[elvis]

Thanks everyone for your input and I appreciate the idea with playing dumb. However, as Chad wrote I called Elite and honestly described the problem (my own fault) and they said it would be no problem. It is apparently some fuse that burnt through and they can send me a replacement. I guess I was really lucky in this case. However, I will first believe it once the trainer is running again.

I will inform you on the progress…

[philipeire]

That’s really quite good of them. Fair play.

[gcarver]

Yeah, I was going to say I have some experience with circuit boards and ac/dc adapters, and the damage mismatching them can cause. Most circuit boards for consumer goods are going to have fuses, and other countermeasures to avoid totally destroying the board. But it’s not always the case that you can just swap in a new component, sometimes that stuff is soldered onto the board – so it’s refurbishable, but not necessarily user serviceable.

The important lesson here is that the barrel-plug size on the cable has nothing to do with the voltage/power capacity of the adapter. I used to think maybe there was a convention, but there is not. You always want to check that the output voltages are the same. The output wattage should be the same as the original, or higher (lower will likely cause the converter to overheat and fail).

[rocourteau]

Exactly. “There’s a fuse” does not equal “there’s a user-replaceable fuse”, it means “as part of our safety certs, we made sure that over-driving the input voltage did not result in an unsafe failure mode of our product”. It can be a part of a protection circuit that’s designed to blow before you melt the PCB or the power brick, for example.

Always make sure that the replacement power supply matches the voltage and polarity of the original one, and has same or higher power (since voltage is the same, current) capacity. The OP met 1 out of 3 conditions - too much voltage, not enough current (but right power), correct polarity (that one is hard to mess up, these connectors are standard).

[iamholland]

that’s pretty awesome! Sometimes fuses don’t catch everything, as there’s still some time for it to burn through. It’ll limit damage though, but most likely you’re going to be good. The main issue is the smell, IMO. Normal fuses don’t let go with a burnt smell, in my experience. I could be wrong, but I’ve never popped a fuse that had a burning smell, as it’s normally encased in sealed glass. Unless your fuse is a fusible link or the thermal fuse (like what you find in ovens).

[rocourteau]

It can be a resistor or cap sized to blow. It’s not necessarily a fuse in the “replaceable fuse” sense.

[Mark_Sutherland]

Hi, think I have done the same! Did you manage to resolve this? Mark

[elvis]

Hi Mark,

Sorry to read about this. Contact Elite and describe the issue. They will likely sell you the motherboard to replace it. Usually this should work.

Good luck!!

Cheers,

Elvis