Sunday, August 19, 2012

Hacking the Kurt Kinetic Road Machine

The Kurt Kinetic Road Machine is a fantastic bike trainer. Donna uses it for club "mad spin" classes during the winter, and I do the occasional Spinervals workout. She also takes it to work to get in lunchtime workouts. In the spring we put the kid's bike adapter on it for Cassie, and she gets to use it as part of our club's "Next Gen" youth development program. Fantastic!


BUT, there is one thing that makes this a pain in the butt to transport. When you fold it up, the resistance device contacts the frame. This scratches the frame and rattles as the car goes over bumps. Not cool!

The spring doesn't have any limiter to keep the resistance unit from moving in to touch the frame.

Enter the hacker.... 15 minutes and a piece of scrap PVC later... This will let you tighten the resistance unit down so it won't rattle or contact the frame.

 I had to smush the PVC a little in the vise to make it fit into the slot in the resistance unit.

I cut out a notch to fit around the slot where the end of the threaded rod goes.

No more contact!

Tightened down and read for non-rattling transport.



Next, we will be trying this with Trainer Road, which will provide estimated power while you are using it. For the fellow techno-geeks, Kurt publishes the power curve here. I'm sure this is a general estimate, maybe one day I can borrow a power meter and compare it to see how close it gets. Anyway I am sure it is better than nothing!

Darren

1 comment:

  1. Hey Darren. Nate from TrainerRoad here. If you have any questions let me know.

    I'm going to send this post to Kurt Kinetic, maybe they will find it useful :).

    ReplyDelete