Brakes won’t work in TR. TR is controlling the whole bike and the braking system seems to be overridden. This might not be the case if you have the Link App open at the same time, but I can’t or I get power drop outs.
Try pairing the LEFT crank arm for cadence. (Once you paid, click the symbol in the upper right corner then click the button that says (use cadence only). The bike does report correct cadence so long as you are totally consistent…any deviation and it’s wonky. It would be nice if you’d raise a support ticket about that as I’ve talked to Stages about it, but I don’t think they truly “get” it.
Almost no trainer can do 15 sec at 600 watts. There are some workarounds…switch to resistance mode…slow your cadence before the change then stomp on it at the second beep to skyrocket the watts…focus on riding the power increase ALL THE WAY around the pedal stroke. This last one really does work, but you MUST put power into each quadrant of each pedal stroke all the way around. You can’t let off the “up” when the other side is going “down”. Lastly, you could not care. Those intervals are about getting the body to make sudden changes, not so much about hitting a specific wattage.
@jct Here’s the link @CBALL81 is talking about…but that dimension system doesn’t exactly work…it’ll get you close but it doesn’t take angles into account. Measuring the saddle height up the Stages seat tube with a slack angle might come out different than if you’re looking at a tri bike with a steep angle. Might be close enough for you, might not…
But, either way, the answer to the “easy” question is still no…you’ll see, the first time you try to figure out where the “bottom bracket” really is…level…plumb bob…they work. but just a little off and your saddle fore aft is going to be off. Bike fitters have a special tool for this, it slides into the spindle then have a cross piece that slides back and forth and stays 90 degrees to the plumb line off the BB.
DCRainmaker in his review noticed that in Erg Mode, the power wobbles during intervals. Has this been fixed in a firmware update?
Are any updates / changes / thoughts for those who have a bike? How are you still liking it?
How easy is it to use without TR / Zwift / etc.? The use case would be for my wife to use as a “spin” bike / with the peloton app, while I would use it with TR.
I was coming from a Wahoo Kickr, which had an ultra smooth power graph in erg mode, and was shocked when I first saw the SB20 power, but I’m pretty confident its just reporting more frequently as opposed to jumping around. Said differently, there’s no jumpiness at all in the effort during intervals, even if the chart looks jumpier the experienced smoothness is excellent.
No updates / changes for me - still extremely happy with the bike, love it for both TR and Zwift (often concurrently with no issues).
Does anybody have experience of the commercial Stages bikes? The ones that are set up for spin classes? Do they have a reputation for reading a little high? A bike at my friend’s studio estimated my FTP at 20 watts (~9%) north of my home setup, which is flattering but I refuse to believe my training mostly for an ultramarathon for months has increased my bike fitness
yes @rjessop our gym has the Stages SC3 bike and I downloaded the user manual. There is a two button quick access feature that takes you directly to the zero reset. When using a bike at the gym, I always lower the left pedal and do a zero reset.
I’m reacting to these comments from @dcrainmaker in his review in the power accuracy section
Well, in my case I’ve been doing a lot of TrainerRoad workouts the last month, and unequivocally the answer is: It’s not a smooth operator.
It’ll change resistance pretty quickly – basically the same as others. That’s fine. But what’s not fine is just how wobbly it is at a given level .
The output will typically be +/- 20-25w from my set-point. So if I’ve got a target power of 313w, it’ll range anywhere between ~285w and 335w. Sometimes upwards of 350w+. It’s all over the place.
Now in talking to Stages, they say part of the trouble is the gigantic Gouda cheese flywheel they have up there, which is sorta like wrestling a bull.
So ultimately, this gets us to the wrap-up here. Having done countless other sessions like this over my time period with it, everything can basically be boiled down to:
A) Power accuracy appears to be identical to the well regarded Favero Assioma power meter pedals – spot on there
B) ERG more stability in terms of maintaining the target power, needs a lot of work
At present, the ERG mode target power stability/smoothness is even more volatile than the Tacx Bike was when it launched last year (and I gave them a hard time too). It’s roughly in the same ballpark as the instability of the Wahoo KICKR Bike at launch in terms of stability.
Stages said that they’re working on the stability/smoothing aspects already (which should just be a software fix), and so hopefully we’ll see that simmer down a bit going forward.
They were not happy - they lost their long 7+ mile weekend walk to Ocean Beach & beach play.
Luckily the air in San Francisco cleaned out, so the dogs got their beach walk last weekend, and I got an in an outside ride - the first since the fires started.
Yes, thank you for the delta breeze the last couple of days. I think the AQI yesterday was 20 late afternoon. Not sure what’s going on today, AQI is over 50 and that’s my cutoff.
SF + the southern section of Marin is still single digits / low teens, except for the Tiburon Peninsula Club sensor which is showing as 1274 - which has to be an error in the sensor
wind changed back to the usual SW and out at the river its 7mph gusting to 15mph, and the permanent monitoring station out on the course just dropped from 55 to 42 so looking good. I just checked and at 7am the AQI was 1, last night it was so good we had the windows open and whole house fan on. This weekend not looking so good, NW wind will probably bring smoke and temps back in upper 90s. Take care over there, and maybe you can get a doggie treadmill for the pupsters
I’m happier and happier with my StagesBike. Love it.
I’m motivated to train much more on it than I ever was on the Kickr. Plus, never having to remove the rear wheel on my road bike again! In the end, that’s what matters. The training works well, and it helps me want to do it. QED.
While the power does vary, I think that’s a pretty real reflection of me. I’m not that smooth or steady, and I’m pushing 90% of FTP in this interval. I do not feel like the bike is over- or under-compensating. It doesn’t do any smoothing like the Kickr did, but in practice it feels very similar to me.
A few new habits need to be learned, but that’s just brand differences. At the start of an interval, a Kickr immediately increases resistance very sharply and you need to stomp on the pedals for a second or two to adapt. On the StagesBike, you simply keep pedaling at your prior cadence without any extra stomping, and the bike adjusts power smoothly within the first few seconds of the interval. Personal preference, I think, but I like the StagesBike method better. If doing Tabata-style short-short intervals, I’d be in Resistance mode anyway on either trainer.
The ONLY thing that feels a little strange is when going from high power (say, 190W) down to a rest interval (say 100W). Sometimes when I reduce power significantly like that in ERG mode, power drops down too far, like to 40-50W, and then takes about 10-15 seconds to go back to where it should be. But only when going from high power to low, and only sometimes. This, I think, is a bug, and I’m sure they’ll fix it in an update.
If that’s the “cost” of having that huge flywheel and having the bike feel so smooth and comfortable overall, then I’m quite happy with that trade-off.
holding out with all the smoke? (our cat sounded a little raspy, and the smoke hit me hard)
