I recently purchased a right sided stages power meter for my TT bike, however, it seems like it’s not possible to remove the chainrings on this unit as the large chainring is blocked by the stages battery/unit itself. Has anyone else encountered this? Does anyone know of a workaround? A quick google search doesn’t turn up much besides stages stating that it can be done by removing the battery cover, which isn’t actually what’s blocking the chainring from being removed. Seems like a pretty serious design flaw, not just changing chainring sizes, but when they wear you’re basically out a powermeter.
It came with the chainrings installed, I’ve loosened all the screws, removed the battery cover and tried fiddling it off any way I can, but there’s just no way to tilt the large chainring to get it off past the power unit itself, I saw the linked info from Stages, but that is basically entirely wrong from everything I can tell… I’m hoping that I’m missing something obvious!
Update: Chatted w/ guys at PM City and they said it should be removable, I just had to muscle it for a while to get it past the unit, apologies for unnecessary thread, maybe it’ll help someone else in the future haha!
I’ve got a 2018 Stages LR setup and while it is tight, it is possible on that Gen3 crank. Stages support had to send me a PDF document explaining the steps (since it is like one of those ring/rope puzzles). You will need to remove the battery door and then there is a sequence of presses to pop the rings off.
Years ago I bought a Stages gen3 Ultegra 8000 dual sided, which I believe is the equivalent of buying that right-side you posted, and adding a left side crank arm. No issues swapping between 53 and 50 rings.
Only problem I had was trying to use a 6800 big ring, because Shimano changed the geometry of the 4 arms between the Ultegra 6800 and 8000 series. And therefore you can’t get the chainring to lay flat, its pretty obvious there is a problem. However the little ring is compatible between both 6800 and 8000.
The process of getting it off was to slowly apply pressure to one screw location at a time repeatedly until it just popped off, thanks for the replies! It really seemed like it wouldn’t come off just eyeballing and fiddling with it at first.
Glad you had success. And also secretly glad I am not the only one who was initially stumped by this. I had to reach out to Stages support as I was sure there was no way I was getting the chainrings off without breaking that battery case! I only figured it out with their help!
If anyone else was struggling with this, I watched the guy at my local bike shop do it this way: He took a rubber mullet and was applying very tender knocks on the chainring just above the holes to force the studs that are inside the holes further and further through the whole. He applied 3-4 tender knocks to nudge it a little and went around to the next hole. By repeating this for a minute or two, he managed to get all the chainring studs out of the holes and get the chainring off.
