Help with kickr reading extremely off numbers

Equipment
1

Hi. I’m trying to help a friend whom I helped set up on TrainerRoad. She isn’t very technically savvy. She has been using her Kickr very successfully with TR for a couple of months now, but they have moved out of the house for a couple of weeks to redo their floors, and she just did a workout and her Kickr is now reading >500W. (I think her FTP is somewhere around 220W.) She doesn’t have another power meter to compare. She has done the spindown calibration with TR as well as with the Wahoo app. Does anyone else have suggestions or experienced something like this and resolved it? Thanks in advance. (Yes, I’ve suggested she contact support at both Wahoo and TR, but thought I’d ask here.)

2

Maybe try the advanced spin down:

3

Has she unplugged the Kickr, waited for at least 1 minute, plugged it back in, then done a spin down?

4

Which generation/year kickr? The gen1 had issues with the power meter, and the gen2 and later use an optical sensor to estimate power. On the gen2 and gen3 (2017), it is possible for light reflections to mess with the power. I had a gen3 and the overhead lights were reflecting off the concrete garage floor and causing issues with power reading and Erg - solved by putting the Kickr on a Wahoo black mat.

5

Thanks! I’ve sent all of these suggestions to her! @AJS914 @AlphaDogCycling @WindWarrior . WIll see what she says after trying these, and any others if anyone else has ideas too!

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6

Ok, so she tried all of these ideas but no go. She says that there’s a “brushing or whooshing” noise. Since she just moved the trainer to a new house/location, how hard is it for the belt to get knocked out of place?

7

Given that Kickrs are shipped across the country / world, plus my personal experience of moving a Kickr (since sold to a friend), that it must be hard to dislodge the belt. Not to say it is impossible, just that the type of jarring it would normally get from transport shouldn’t dislodge the belt.

At this point I think your friends only real option is to work with Wahoo support

8

Thanks, yeah, I already told her to contact Wahoo support, but thought I’d check in here to see if anyone had other ideas. Her wife described the noise differently, more like a “dragging squeaking” sound. :woman_shrugging: I guess at this point I’ll leave it to her to work with the pros to figure it out…

9

Has anyone done an Advanced Spindown recently on a V1 or V2 Kickr? They just did a major overhaul of the app and it seems like the feature is gone (5 taps on the instructions is supposed to reveal the advanced spindown per the zwift article).

My Kickr v2 always reads -20 watts compared to Stages. At one time I did compare the Stages to a Powertap and they were pretty close. I wanted to try the advanced spindown to see if it made any difference.

10

Replying to my own post. Wahoo sent me this link with the new instructions:

https://wahoofitness.yonyx.com/y/conversation/?id=c6c2e2e0-be88-11e7-b908-bc764e10c19d

You have to tap 10 times now on the trainer icon.

Edit: it’s a little tricky getting those 10 taps right. Also sadly, my trainer still reads 20 watts low at every intensity. Oh well, I use my bike’s power meter anyway.

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