Terrible Battery Life - New Pedals with New Battery Doors

I got Vector 3 pedals recently and they came with the new battery doors. On arrival, the right pedal batteries were totally dead. The left batteries were fine (I tested both with my multimeter to confirm). I replaced the dead batteries and went on a ride and things worked great.

It's now one week later, and I just got on my bike. "Power meter battery is low".

Major bummer. Why are they dying so quickly? Anyone else have this issue?

0 Rich.Ray over 6 years ago

When I got my Vector 3 pedals back in December I went through three sets of the Garmin recommended LR44 batteries. They would last 20 - 30 hours. I switched to the single Duracell CR1/3N 3V Lithium Battery in April and that battery lasted 4 months with almost daily riding. I am sticking with the Duracell CR1/3N.

0 renschler over 6 years ago

I'm stoked that is working for you but apparently Garmin has stated on these forums that using non-LR44/SR44s voids the warranty... Wish they would come out with an official statement regarding the short battery life.

0 Former Member over 6 years ago

Ist it possible that the thread inside the pedal is damaged (it is a plastic thread), not the thread of the battery door?

It could be a prob, cause then the pressure between both batterys isn't high enough and then you have higher electrical resistance, if this happens the electrical consumption could be higher then normal, it's my personal opinion, cause my first battery set with new doors was empty after 400km and the change of the new battery doors made by my bicycle dealer (they damaged the thread of my right pedal) :-\

i made an appointment with my dealer, they will replace my pedals at the end of the Season, by guarantee or they will pay them!

sorry for my bad english, hope you understand what i mean!

0 Former Member over 6 years ago

I will try to use CR1/3N batteries as well. If the problem still happens, I'll try try replace entire Vecto 3s pedals for a new one during the warranty.

0 renschler over 6 years ago

My right pedals died again. This is my 3rd workout on the bike... I'm unable to attach the .fit file to this forum for some reason. But if you look at the data you'll see the right pedal drops out intermittently - not sure what to do. I can keep putting new batteries in but I wish I could get a response from Garmin support. It's been 10 days now since my original support email without a response.

Adding link to .fit file: https://www.dropbox.com/s/3r3uzrpxz0...13786.fit?dl=0

Adding link to image of dropouts (L/R balance graph): https://www.dropbox.com/s/ul8dpghw7tyqzd5/Screen%20Shot%202018-08-10%20at%205.58.19%20PM.png?dl=0

0 renschler over 6 years ago

I ended up calling support - the wait was about 40 min but once I got through the support staff was very helpful. I strongly recommend calling instead of sending emails.

They recommended deleting the power meter from my watch, and then repairing only the ANT+ channel.

Then they said there's an existing support ticket where the pedals sometimes read low battery, even though they don't have low battery, and this is associated with the dropouts. They said they hope to release a software fix that could resolve this issue and will keep me posted...

In the meantime - i did check. My left batteries read 1.5V (across both batteries at the same time - which is interesting I thought this should read 3V?), and my right batteries read 1.4V. So they are a tad be lower but not completely dead.