I am using an Elite TUO indoor trainer, and recently bought Assioma Favero pedals to also have a power meter for outdoor rides. Out of curiousity I checked the difference in power while doing a training on TrainerRoad. The pedals report a consistent 30 watts lower than the power of Elite TUO.
I did a calibration of the TUO before the ride, as well as a 0 offset for the pedals.
Is this to be expected, or not? I would have expected some difference but a consistent 30 watts seems odd.
Not sure on the Tuo, but most often it is recommended to calibrate a trainer after it is warmed up, around 10 minutes or so. Doing it “cold” can lead to different results.
Outside of that, welcome to the world of mismatched power data. You will see identical thread between any mix of trainers and power meters throughout the forum. There are a host of possible reasons.
In particular, if you are using a single-sided power meter (you didn’t specify Uno or Duo), you can get different data purely from unequal power since a single will double the data from one leg. It all gets more confusing from there.
Thanks for the quick response. I have the duo pedals.
But I did the calibration before warm up so that might be a reason. I will try calibrating it after a proper warm up and see if it makes a difference!
With wheel on, make certain you have followed the manufacturer setup for tire pressure and roller pressure as well.
Edit to add, I found an article to check, if you haven’t seen and followed it already:
This covers important steps, including the 10 minute warm up I guessed at, as well as a full reset of tire & roller engagement after the warm up, before the actual calibration. So follow that precisely.
It’s also helpful to look at L/R balance, that will tell you if one pedal is way off. The pedals are two completely independent power meters, so if they track well together that is a good sign.
I matched the suggested 7.5 bar and other points, did the calibration after riding 10 min. The power reading is now almost matching between pedals and TUO… thx a lot!
Checked this too, it is not a perfect balance for me but I think nothing out of the ordinary (48-50). Seems like I just missed some of the pointsto set up the TUO correctly for the most accurate readings… it’s much closer now.
Sorry, but I don’t think you can ever treat wheel-on trainers seriously.
They can be ok-ish for casual training/zwifting etc. but since you have faveros, one of the better PMs out there, I’m not sure why you would even consider power from this type of a trainer.
I understand what you mean. Was just keen on understanding where the big difference might come from.
To be honest, the Elite TUO seems to do a very decent job for a wheel on trainer as the power readings (after I followed up on the tips given by Chad) are very close between trainer & pedals.