Wahoo update bug - devices showing 2 Jan 2006

Page may contain affiliate links. Please see terms for details.

Binky

Über Member
Interesting. I'll fire up my Garmin 76S which is 24(?) years old. See what happens...

You do that.

Don't forget to report back. I just can't wait to find out what happens.
 

Baldy

Veteran
Location
ALVA
I was thinking of upgrading my bolt before all this happened. I'm off on holiday in three weeks and having some sort of sat nav would be nice. I don't do strava. A bit of a question of how long is a piece of string but should I wait or just get a new one?
 

Binky

Über Member
Yes I know, I was just saying that I'm not bothered about not being able to upload to strava as I don't use it.

The two rides I've done since this issue started has really only affected Strava that I can tell. If you don't use it then the Bolt still works fine. Records distance, time, cadence, HR etc. I'm not sure though about navigation as if you use it for that I believe currently it's not working/accurate. So if you use it for routes etc it may be not be useable.
However, I'd hope within 3 weeks Wahoo will have sorted it. Hopefully a lot sooner.
 

geocycle

Legendary Member
The two rides I've done since this issue started has really only affected Strava that I can tell. If you don't use it then the Bolt still works fine. Records distance, time, cadence, HR etc. I'm not sure though about navigation as if you use it for that I believe currently it's not working/accurate. So if you use it for routes etc it may be not be useable.
However, I'd hope within 3 weeks Wahoo will have sorted it. Hopefully a lot sooner.

Mmm.. it depends. Cadence and HR should be fine as was my rear radar. Time, distance and location have been impacted and I’ve had no gps signal for most of my commutes this week. It’s likely any recorded rides will be incomplete. I’d have struggled to follow a route on the mk1 elemnt bolt head unit this week. Hopefully my mk2 elemnt bolt will function fine this weekend on the Sunday ride.
 

Binky

Über Member
Mmm.. it depends. Cadence and HR should be fine as was my rear radar. Time, distance and location have been impacted and I’ve had no gps signal for most of my commutes this week. It’s likely any recorded rides will be incomplete. I’d have struggled to follow a route on the mk1 elemnt bolt head unit this week. Hopefully my mk2 elemnt bolt will function fine this weekend on the Sunday ride.

I've been using a Cateye computer as well and the speed, distance and time been identical. Riding known climbs the gradient has been showing as correct as well so on the face of it I'm seeing little issue other than on the first ride the date was showing as 2006 but today was correct. Only other thing I've noticed as a Strava user is a lot less segments reported.
I do however have a separate speed sensor (I don't rely on GPS as that goes patchy in some areas anyway).
 

Alex321

Guru
Location
South Wales
I've been using a Cateye computer as well and the speed, distance and time been identical. Riding known climbs the gradient has been showing as correct as well so on the face of it I'm seeing little issue other than on the first ride the date was showing as 2006 but today was correct. Only other thing I've noticed as a Strava user is a lot less segments reported.
I do however have a separate speed sensor (I don't rely on GPS as that goes patchy in some areas anyway).
That is why yours has sort of worked.

The bug means that GPS keeps dropping out. For those of us without a separate speed sensor, this means that the distance and speeds are not right, because whenever the GPS comes back, it assumes you have travelled in a straight line at constant speed from where it lost it.

You are seeing little issue because you have a backup for when the issue occurs/.
 

Binky

Über Member
That is why yours has sort of worked.

The bug means that GPS keeps dropping out. For those of us without a separate speed sensor, this means that the distance and speeds are not right, because whenever the GPS comes back, it assumes you have travelled in a straight line at constant speed from where it lost it.

You are seeing little issue because you have a backup for when the issue occurs/.

Quite possibly although I've read on other forums etc that even those with a separate speed sensor the unt was rendered hopeless. What I don't understand though is I used it for 2 rides since Sunday and first time date was 2006, yesterday it was back to normal 2025 although something still not right as so many segments missing and zomming in closely on Strava map I can see some stragight lines where it's just extrapolated between two points.

Anyway, for now my Bolt seems useable although I hoep a fix issued soon.
 

Dogtrousers

Kilometre nibbler
Best of luck everyone with the firmware update.

Just to stir the Garmin v Wahoo tribal pot a bit, it's clear that the Garmin techies in 2002 were more on the ball than their Wahoo equivalents in 2017. I just switched on my 23 year old Garmin 76S and it quite happily told me the current date (after taking a very long time to get a fix).

Interestingly DC Raimaker has made an uncharacteristic error in his article dated Aug 18 https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2025/08...its-reset-20-years-back-become-unusuable.html

Well, Wahoo hasn’t quite confirmed yet, but the assumption here is a bug related to 1024, and specifically the number of weeks the 10-bit counter holds. In this case, it reached the maximum amount of weeks it could hold over the weekend, since January 1st, 2006, and thus ‘reset’. And this past weekend (yesterday) is exactly 1,024 weeks since January 1st, 2006.

No. First, the start of the GPS epoch is 6th Jan 2006, not the 1st. And last weekend was 1,355 weeks since then, not 1024. The first rollover (1023 to 1024) took place (with a moderate fanfare and Y2K like warnings) in April 2019 and the next one happens in Nov 2038. So it's not as simple as the week counter rolling over, although it seems to be related, but has some extra layers to it.

Just why? It was not the 1980s when these devices came out, it was 2017 or later!
Because the 10 bit size of the week counter is part of the specification of GPS, not part of the design of the device. That choice was made by the US military designers of GPS way back in the 1970s So satellites are transmitting 10bit week counters right now. It's up to the device to be aware of the fact that it has a limited size and account for that. And this accounting would appear to be what has gone wrong.

Anyway, fingers crossed for a resolution.
 
Last edited:

Dogtrousers

Kilometre nibbler
But why not use the CNAV message which uses a 13 bit week number and was operational 3 years before the Bolt V1 came out?

Who knows? Going to take a wild guess (and I'm completely ignorant of this area): Because they chose off the shelf GPS tech (chipsets etc) to incorporate into their new device to a price point and that was what they got. Once it proved to be a success they may not have been so constrained.

Could be entirely wrong.
 
Last edited:

Ming the Merciless

There is no mercy
Photo Winner
Location
Inside my skull
Because they chose off the shelf GPS tech (chipsets etc) to incorporate into their new device to a price point and that was what they got

If that were the cause wouldn‘t it have gone wrong in 2019, a couple of years after release? I suspect it’s not the chipsets just Wahoo’s interpretation of the messages being incorrect after their latest updates.
 
Top Bottom