August 2025 update! Same as most people here I bought a V5 Kickr around Covid. Unfortunately for me I only did 5,000km on mine in total, which isn’t a lot in the grand scheme of things over 5 years. My Kickr has been sitting idle for 8 weeks, I hopped on the bike only to find that it is not registering power or cadence.
It sounds like the optical sensor on these are prone to issues, there are a few threads on Reddit that discuss this issue further, with some being able to fix it at home.
I’ve reached out to Wahoo for support, fingers crossed I can get a refurb, otherwise I may end up having to replace the Kickr, or purchase power meter pedals instead, and continue using the Kickr for resistance.
I just started having the same problem. I appreciate this thread informing me that I am not the only one having this problem. My Kickr V5.0 purchased in Oct 2020 only has 4757 km on it. It connects just fine to my android tablet running Zwift but shows no power. I tried restarting my tablet, powering down the Kickr, and doing a spindown on the Wahoo app. I was not able to complete the spindown as resistance and power wouldn’t allow me to get past about 18 mph. I plan to contact Wahoo tomorrow and will report back. I hope they send me a replacement like many of you have gotten. Does anyone know where it is shipped from? I am in TN and could drive to Atlanta to pick it up if I can get it much faster.
Dead V5 here as well. Same exact symptoms as everyone else (no power/cadence/speed). Purchased new in November 2021. Went dead a week or so ago.
One thing I was able to do, I had to warm it up for like an hour and try spin down tests over and over, FINALLY got it to work, but by the next day it was back to how it was.
Emailed Wahoo. Mackenzie got back to me and within a week, she was sending me a refurb V5 free of charge. Took two days to get here (St. Louis, MO). Setting things back up now.
I had to show original receipt, pic of serial number on trainer, and then my name/address. No questions asked, they sent me the refurb and didn’t require me to do anything with the broken one.
Australian here - my v5 is also dead. Purchased October 2021, haven’t used for 6-9 months then went to use it and bam, no power/cadence data. Did latest firmware update etc. but won’t register any movement. I’ve logged a ticket with Wahoo using my original receipt and a pic of serial number. See how we go I guess…
Luke. I have been through this process twice. Sounds like the same sequence of events. On both occasions I have not used it for nearly a year. Then when i decided to “get on the bike” it lasted about 2 weeks, maybe 5 or 6 sessions. And then It failed. I had done a firmware update around the time as I started using it again
Stated with erratic cadence and power. Then power max’s out at something low that was not correct. Then eventually nothing
My replacement of the 1st replacement is due to arrive soon. They collected the broken one last week.
You should get a swap. That is what the CEO said in his YT video.
You just need to persist with the support ticket. All the testing. Videos. Etc. this time round for me it has taken a long time to get to this point. The support team’s response is very slow
I’ve managed to get a swap out for a refurb v6! Which isn’t too bad
Was a bit of a pain trying to get in touch with Wahoo customer support
However……if you’re trying to contact them from the UK/England then they won’t answer you till 2pm in the afternoon as they’re a Canadian based company.
Glad I’m not the only one experiencing issues with this. Bought my first Wahoo Kickr v5 secondhand via Facebook, worked great for a couple of years then started having issues. Replaced out of warranty last fall/winter. Didn’t use it at all during summer, came back to ride for fall again and it wasn’t reporting any power/cadence etc. After a month+ of back and forth with their tech support they finally sent out a replacement free of charge a little less than a month ago. Seemed to work great! Was finally getting back into the groove of getting my weekly training rides in. All of a sudden last week I loaded up Zwift to ride with my friends, and it was incorrectly reporting data. No matter how hard I was pedaling/spinning it was locked at 1.2 w/kg and I got dropped off the back of the group. Then slowly it wound down to 0.0 w/kg. Tried Rouvy to see if it was a Zwift connectivity issue, but that quickly displayed the same symptoms. Once again I’ve returned to dealing with the extremely frustrating wahoo support system, to once again fix the problem that wasn’t fixed last time. Ready to give up riding indoors entirely at this point, especially when my fiancee has a 10+ year old Kickr of a different generation that is seemingly bulletproof.
For those not aware, if the IR sensor is not the problem the fault lies in the input pin of the GEM2 BT module shorting to ground which can be due to static discharge. The fix for this is to extract the firmware via J-Link, sourcing a replacement GEM2 module from NPE, flashing your firmware to the replacement module and resoldering to the mainboard. There is a thread about this at bikeforums under Wahoo Kickr Circuit Board Repair
Had this really annoying issue happen after Xmas. Having tried everything, I resorted to doing a workout with the Wahoo app only and everything else shut down. Following this, everything came back to life - including Zwift.
Had the same issue with KICKR v5 bought in 2021. Contacted Wahoo Support and after couple of mails with recommendations to check latest FW, unplug/plug KICKR, etc they just sent me replacement unit (refurbished). Given that device is not under warranty I’m quite happy with the solution
