Turbo Trainer Advice

Ah I fucking cursed the turbo replacement with PBK by discussing it.

tl;dr
buy turbo in november 2018
notice noise in april 2020
contact saris (because PBK would probably say contact saris)
get a "yeah that's awful, we'll replace"
Goes quiet (corona probs)
chase, get told to contact raleigh.
contact raleigh.
get told to contact PBK. show them all my conversations with saris and raleigh.
christmas.
pick up again.
"I have now heard back from the UK suppliers, Raleigh, about your Fluid trainer issue.
I sent over your correspondence with Saris to them to see if it is something they can pick up and honour.

Unfortunately as the unit is outside of the 2 year warranty, and was at the time of initially raising it, they are not able to offer any help for this unless Saris have explicitly agreed to it and confirmed with them.

As such I am afraid you will have to try and get Saris to respond again and confirm, and then contact Raleigh with the details.
Failing that I am afraid it may have to just be a new trainer job."

Le sigh. I'm indicating I contacted Saris in April 2020, so within the 2 year warranty of purchase.

yup, using a wheel block from my old cycleops turbo. no issues at all

Super useful. Many thanks, you've just saved me about £50 or whatever extortionate sum a "proper" turbo mat costs :)

I'm just using a fluid "dumb" trainer (wheel on) and it's actually pretty quiet. Top tip: locate it near the edge of the room to minimise vibration with timber floors!

Wahoo kickr core in stock, should I get that or hold out for the kickr (not core)

Get the kickr core

Sweet, that has made the decision easy and it’s now ordered.

I hade a bike snipe alert, in my time dithering wiggles stock all sold out. However wahoo have stock if you are signed into their website. If you are just visiting they are not showing as available. Thankfully last week I bought a wahoo tickr hrm so had a wahoo account.

DC rainmaker: normally i say this now I say "buy what's available"

His other review says (paraphrase) "take the kickr, change the legs use the same internals charge £300 less and call it the core?" "Donezo"

There is very little point in buying anything other than a Kickr Core imo.

Mine has been great, and it's very very quiet

That’s great news. My current turbo (Tacx vortex smart) makes the garage resonate - and upstairs is where guests stay (though not happening because of covid) and where my wife has her sewing machines and does creative work, so this’ll be a great improvement.

Am also (sort of) looking forward to having a turbo that can do sprints - the Tacx takes so long to wind up that the sprints just got missed entirely.

I had a Vortex then "upgraded" to a Flux, which I eventually sold because i moved overseas, but it was not as quiet as the Kickr Core.

I live in a house made of wood (with brick/rendered cladding), I have my setup in the spare room at the moment and you can't hear the turbo from any of the other rooms in the house

Unfortunately as the unit is outside of the 2 year warranty, and was at the time of initially raising it, they are not able to offer any help for this unless Saris have explicitly agreed to it and confirmed with them.

If you raised it with them before the warranty was up, tell them that the time-lag is their issue not yours. Trading standards may also offer some advice.

Transmitting bluetooth to computer or something else?

@amey

@chez_jay that's exactly what it is, I couldn't find an off the shelf wireless solution so built this (also gave me something do to). I'll try and make the code more sophisticated when I get bored.

@atz it's wired to a dock that goes to my laptop.

@giofox it has no sweat protection but have a Vacmaster that keeps it safe, everything is blown toward me.

You need to buy the Pi also and have a SD card so it's a little spendy.

cool, should I PayPal you?

Yeah. Whatameysaid

list below this line

1. amey
   
2. Chalfie
   
3. cozey
   

1. cozey
   
2. amey (need wahoo mount)
   
3. chalfie
   

1. cozey
   
2. amey (need wahoo mount, keyboard should be skinned with custom "respect are troops"/poppy livery)
   
3. chalfie
   

Does it effectively just act as a keyboard then or is there something more sophisticated?

Cheers. When you mention 'some code tweaking' it sounds like more than just a map of which key sends which keyboard character though (I don't know TrainerRoad so don't know what the keys are likely to do)?

Does it effectively just act as a keyboard then or is there something more sophisticated?

Correct, that is all it does.

Yup just key binding - though you could make it more sophisticated.
All mine does is Left, T, Right, where T changes between ERG and Resistance.
I've also chosen the key colours and how they change when pressed.

I'd like to get the middle button (T) to toggle the other buttons, e.g.
Press T [open Resistance]
Left/Right
Press T [open ERG]
Up/Down

This would allow me to change resistance (left-right) and change ERG (up-down) in TR. Though the keyboard doesn't know what mode the software is in, needs more thought [perfect lockdown project eh!].

PayPal pls :P

Saris H3 is in the post.

One thing I wondered is whether you could theoretically do a power test in erg mode? For example, could I set my FTP at 350w and try to simply turn the pedals at ~368w for 20 mins?

Failing i.e. grinding to a halt would eliminate the question of whether you’ve squeezed every last drop out.

It's a way to test if your ftp is exactly 350w. You will not know if you could have done slightly more, or if you fail to do 20 mins you will only know that your FTP is NOT 350w.