Confessions of a Cheapskate

I snagged a Garmin tacx smart trainer a little while back. Deal presented itself and with 20 minutes of the ad posting, it was in my garage hooked up to zwift, fully functional. I really like riding and basing my effort on measured power, watts, vs just heart rate zones. So I decided I wanted power metering on the bike when it’s not on the trainer.

If you have ever looked at power meters for your bike, they are expensive! I budgeted $200 to get a GOOD power meter setup on my bike. I watched and I watched.

I learned that SRM crank spider meters are sort of the gold standard. I also learned that they are not as simple as swapping out a coin battery when the battery dies. So when a deal presented itself locally for a pair of dura ace crankset and a SRM wireless meter, I dug into SRM a little more. Would this work with my Garmin 530 computer? All signs pointed to yes, and I headed over. None of the identifying stickers were in place, so I told the guy I couldn’t confidently know the unit would work for me, so I set it down. He said, just make me an offer. Listed price was $200, and he has come down to $100 to entice me to come see it. Then I offered $50 to buy the unit.

With it now in my possession, I set to testing it to see if it worked. Popped open the back, removed the batteries, and checked their voltage. Dead as a door nail. I fabricated a harness to allow me to mimic two batteries, and I set my bench power supply to 3.5v and fired it up. Waved a magnet over the cadence sensors, and voila! Success! It paired right up to my Garmin and reported itself ready for duty!

Amazon ought to have the batteries here later today…

Love it when multiple hobbies combined on a simple little project. The batteries were $14 each, so $28. I would not have ordered them if it failed the initial tests. A magnet for cadence sensor was $25. Additionally a new bottom bracket was purchased as the ones in my parts bin are crunchy

That puts the total expenses for the project so far at $128.

Batteries showed up. Just because I am a cheapskate does mean that I like wait for stuff to show up, so Amazon delivered a couple of batteries and I installed them, and the magnet for cadence showed up thanks to eBay. Put it all together, and wham! We have a fully functioning SRM power meter.

Happy with this purchase so far.