Back in Business with Power Meter

I went out last week to improve the calibration on my iBike.  One can simply do a quick tilt calibration, enter the weight of you and the bike (with water bottles half full), do a coast down, and you are on your way.  The iBike, though, improves the calculation if you do a 4 mile out and back ride after your coast down.

Last week one evening I did just that.  Then the thing quit working again!

I wrote to Velocomp who promptly sent me some suggestions to try.  If those didn't work, they'd send me a new mount.  I tried everything suggested and it still didn't work, so I proceeded to removed the mount.  Ahhh,  I think I just found the problem..

As I was removing the wire that goes down the fork to measure speed, I noticed that the way I had the wire positioned caused a slight cut and possibly a short across the wires.  I taped that up with some electrical tape, and that fixed it!  I'm back in business with a power meter.

I was able to ride my full 100 mile ride yesterday without incident of the iBike cutting out.  I feel it is calibrated very accurate now, too, as I'm getting numbers close to what I get on the Computrainer.  The nice feature of the iBike is that I can go back and apply the new calibration factors to the old rides (assuming nothing material changed).  So I did just that.  The good news--the long ride data is pretty consistent from ride to ride using my new profile--and improving slightly from long ride to ride (in terms of average watts).  The bad news is that I'm not making exponential gains.

Train safe!