I have a zwift ride and my trainer is Tacx Neo 2t and during my race today I had a complete power drop on the climb where it felt like went from gear 15 to gear 1 and it took a couple seconds to regain power again. I’ve noticed this happening a couple times when riding in the draft too. I’m trainer is fully up to date and can’t quite figure out what the deal is.
It looks like from your past posts you may be using Apple TV. On that platform you don’t have access to game logs for troubleshooting so if you want to know if there were problems with the connection to the trainer you would need to contact support and ask them. If you’re no longer using Apple TV then you could upload a log file to TrainerDX to understand if that’s happening.
never had that happen with my 2T but I do often get no resistance changes when going from say 17 to 24 but it is only occasional
Definitely not my connection. I’ve done a lot of research and seems to be a Tacx Neo 2t problem. Some claim it’s the cadence monitor in the machine and some say you need to turn unplug it for 10 seconds and some say there isn’t a fix. It’s apparently a common occurrence to lose resistance when going up hill. Not sure if there is a fix for it yet.
What happens when you use a cadence sensor?
Trainer connectivity issues are more of a thing you want to rule out early since if that’s happening you would need to resolve it before getting into other troubleshooting tasks.
I have the same issue with my setup, Neo 2T with a Zwift Ride (also I have the same problem when using my regular bike with the Neo, so it must be a Garmin problem not Zwift). It’s very frustrating, sometimes resistance drops, other times it jumps up 100 or more watts. It appears incorrect reading of cadence is the issue, there is always odd spikes in the numbers. Firmware is up to date and the Zwift racing mode is enabled in the Neos settings.
I had issues with the Tacx Neo 2T resistance jumps and an external cadence sensor did not solve them. I tested with both a simple Wahoo cadence sensor and also with Garmin Vector pedals.
I just raced in ZRL yesterday and noticed the power loss on the bridge climb again and it was only a 3% climb and so I had to virtually shift into a way high gear to get any kind of power back and it was super annoying. Sometimes I feel a little power loss on sprints too. Im wondering if that Tacx Neo 2t isn’t calibrating the draft correctly because I’m starting to think it happens on climbs when I’m in and out of the draft. I could be wrong though.
The trainer is unaware of the draft benefit, it doesn’t need that information.
Okay, so it’s a Garmin issue. Do you think if I raised the trainer difficulty from 30% during races to 40/50 would help? Idk I’m kinda clueless when it comes to this stuff.
I’m not sure what the cause is, but the first thing I would want to understand is whether there is any problem with connectivity between the trainer and the device running Zwift when it happens, which could be done by uploading a log file to trainerdx.com (provided you are not an Apple TV user).
There are also various comments here on the forum about whether the Neo 2T resistance fluctuates due to faulty cadence readings when using virtual shifting. I can’t say I understand what is going on with those reports. Some people say using an external cadence sensor helped, others say it didn’t.
Don’t think I’ll be able to get you those logs cause I use Apple TV and companion app. I don’t think it’s a connection issue. More of a Garmin issue.
You may very well be right, it’s just a good thing to rule out since if it were happening, that would need to be addressed early in the troubleshooting process. Zwift support can see logs from Apple TV if you ever need that.
The other thing Apple TV users need to do is force quit the app after every time they use it. Again this may not be important for you but you should do it anyway so the app starts fresh each time.
Hi all, I’ve been doing Zwift workouts pretty much exclusively the past few months (all ERG), so the issue didn’t really bite me and I’ve been a silent reader on this thread. Now I want to get back into free rides and races and this blocks that.
So, overall same problem for me. Current firmware. Setup: Tacx Neo 2T on 2.7.0, MacBook Pro M2 running Zwift over native Bluetooth, Zwift Ride frame. The issue started right after I updated to the virtual-shifting firmware months back. Multi-second resistance drops in free rides and races, on both flats and climbs.
What I’ve isolated so far:
- TrainerDX log from a 96-minute session came back clean. No BLE disconnects, no FTMS resends, no trainer resets, no ANT+ or UDP errors. Should rule out the connection between the trainer and my Mac.
- Steel crank extension is installed. No effect on the resistance drops.
- Tested Favero Assioma pedals as the Power and Cadence source in Zwift, with the Neo kept as Controllable and Resistance only. Drops continue exactly the same. So Zwift’s virtual-shifting calculation isn’t the cause. It’s must be happening inside the trainer.
- ERG-mode workouts run without a single drop. So, the motor and the basic resistance loop should be fine, only the SIM-mode virtual-shifting control path seems broken.
Next thing on my list is QZ. Pair the Neo to QZ instead of Zwift, let QZ apply the virtual gearing externally by modifying the gradient it sends to the trainer. Has somebody ever tried this?
What really bothers me is that I bought the Zwift Ride specifically because of the Garmin/Zwift virtual-shifting announcement. That was the whole reason. Right now I’m sitting on a Zwift Ride and a Neo 2T, both premium products, and the one feature that made buying both make sense doesn’t work. Nine months since the original Cadence Instability thread (655298), no firmware past 2.7.0, and no public statement from Garmin/Zwift that a fix is even being worked on. At this price point I find that hardly acceptable.
Has anybody heard anything from Garmin about a timeline for a fix? Or if Garmin has decided not to fix it?
Semi-old thread, but just chiming in with my experience.
Replaced the KICKR core 2 with a Neo 2T. Right out of the gate I was having resistance surging and drops. More importantly I would get a weird resistance spike half way in every standing sprint that would all of a sudden drop away. Most resistance surges were on climbs or when raising the power.
3 days of calls with Garmin where we did lots of testing in Zwift and the TACX app. The issue only existed in Zwift.
Then we found the culprit. It only occurs in Zwift with race mode enabled (race mode is a Zwift only feature). If you turn off race mode the trainer behaves fine.
Garmin says this is a Zwift issue as Zwift uses a completely different software package for race mode and the trainer is just doing what Zwift is telling it to.
I can’t comment if they are correct or not.
What I can say is race mode doesn’t work properly on my Neo 2T, to the point it’s unusable. Race mode was a big selling point to me.
I am back on my KICKR Core 2.
Thanks, Steven. I will go down this path (again). I played around with race mode and it didn’t change anything but it’s worth giving a try.
Well, you can ignore my previous post. I swapped back to give the Neo another crack. Even with race mode off it still is spiking/dropping resistance. It seemed to behave for awhile… but that didn’t last.
I even came off coasting down a decent, without changing my gear. Once I got to the bottom and started pedaling I was spun out. This was in gear 15 which is usually my threshold gear for flats. It’s like it completely lost what gear I was in or how much resistance to give.
Anyway, Garmin is taking the stance of blaming Zwift since it’s fine in TACX and other apps, but I don’t believe that. The TACX app doesn’t use virtual shifting… I wonder if it’s something with their virtual shifting that is not correct and it switches resistance profiles around inadvertently.
I have the exact same problem with power dropouts, sent log files to Zwift and they said it was the Click & Cog, I got a warranty replacement and it worked fine for 3 rides and then it started again. I am running Zwift on a Macbook pro and have a brand new Neo2T with Click & Cog all updated to the latest firmwares. Things I have done:
- Isolated my phone and macbook onto a dedicated 2.4Ghz wifi with nothing else connected
- Moved connection off my Ant+ dongle to connection via Companion to Macbook
- replaced the Click n Cog with new, even after that I tried my wife’s Click n Cog and still the same
- Installed a manually Cadence sensor to try and isolate the potentially internal Neo sensor being faulty
It still occurs and extremely randomly, sometimes I can ride for 30 minutes with no dropouts and then 5 within 5 minutes. I am so frustrated…
if you run the log via https://trainerdx.com where does it show the drops are?
Why are you using the Companion to bridge devices to the Mac? Modern Macs (ie, M1 or newer CPU) are generally quite good for Zwift with solid Bluetooth performance.
Why are you using 2.4GHz WiFi? Are you in an area with poor WiFi signal that doesn’t allow you to reliably use 5GHz WiFi?
When you bridge the connection via Companion, pairing reliability will depend on WiFi reliability, whereas if you connect directly to the Mac, that is not a factor.