Tonight, i did the Kiss First Base Race and noticed that for most of the race, there wasn’t any resistance on my bkool pro trainer. This lead me to producing some insane W/kg. The resistance would occasionally be applied but not in any correspondence to where i was on the course. This is now the second time this has happened to me in a race. I have so far only successfully completed one race without complications. When i ride in non event mode, i don’t seem to have these troubles.
Can anyone please offer some advice. I have updated the firmware and am running the FE-C
HI David, I used my Bkool Pro trainer all last Winter quite successfully on Zwift (though you do have to switch off ERG for workouts). However, I used it for the first time last night and I had a similar issue to yourself, with me producing massive w/kg’s, though this was just riding around, not in a race. I thought it may be something to do with the Zwift update but reading another similar comment on the here, Zwift have replied saying that it is due to the Bkool update (i had to update the firmware on my trainer recently) and the update has optimised the trainer for the Bkool sim but caused issues for Zwift. So it seems we need to contact Bkool and push them for another update. However, I don’t see them rushing to support a competitors Sim program
I found your post, when trying to find information about the similar problem. Recently I was able to ride far more watts than usual, not event getting close to my normal bike hear rate. It seems as if all the resistance was not there. I can feel the resistance change when going uphill but still - it seems that the resistance is really minimal.
Is it a known issue? Is there any way to handle it?
Zwift seems to be working fine for me now with my Bkool trainer for just riding around. I’m not sure what happened, it just seemed to start working again. (I haven’t tried a workout for a while and that seems to be where most of the incompatibility lies). In the settings on Zwift you can increase trainer resistance. have you tried this?
i’m having a similar issue whereby the resistance does not seem to alter enough when the gradient increases. It worked fine before but now seems to have stopped changing the resistance. I emailed bkool and they have offered an engineer to call me in order for them to log into my bkool and run some software to analyse the problem. Hopefully this will resolve it. I do have a feeling it must be due to an update.
I stopped using the BKool simulator and only use Zwift now, so not sure its the same issue on Bkool. But my plan is to try Bkool out again on a free trial to see if it has the same issue. Hope I resolve it by elimination. Will let everyone know what the Bkool engineer says on Thursday.
Hi James. You don’t need to use the bkool free trial to use the simulator. Much of the bkool sim is free to use so you’ll be able to test out the trainer. Bkool are a software company that made the Bkool sim, they outsourced the production of the trainer to another company, and Bkool make most of their money from subscriptions the Simulator. So they don’t support Zwift and they won’t be happy to help if you’re only using Zwift. It would be like complaining to Apple that you can’t run a Samsung App!
Test your trainer out on the bkool sim - if you don’t get gradient feedback, then you know there is a problem with the trainer (remember that Bkool is realistic feedback ie 10% gradient will feel like 10%, whereas Zwift is around half, so 10% gradient feels like 5%). If the problem is only only on the Zwift sim then I’m not sure they will be able to help you as they don’t support it. On your Zwift settings, make sure you have ERG mode switched on, and run the ‘trainer difficulty’ bar in the middle position
Thanks Paul, i’ll give that a go. The issue I had with Bkool is that I was a previous subscription member and now that I have stopped it will not allow me to use the version which is no subscription it just pops up and says do you want a free 7 or 30 day trial and no option of saying no. I may have to resubscribe under a different email to see if this allows me non subscription access.
My plan may be to do the free 30 day subscription before the engineer calls so it can be properly tested on the BKool sim.
I’ll double check the difficulty bar and ERG setting tonight. Can you remind me where to find these.
I’ll check for you when I get home - but I’m sure that you can find the settings if you start ride, then stop riding and select menu. You’ll see the settings sign in the bottom right hand corner
