And now my trainer broke
 

Real bummer. Kickr broke at the base where the bracket that holds the flywheel and cassette meets the lower three footers. nice little crack right at the bottom. hoping that wahoo has some resolution but not holding my breath.

Photos?
If it's metal, and Wahoo won't do anything, I'm sure a local welding shop could fix that for you.
Do you use a rocker plate?

Wahoo has good customer service.

I've heard back from Wahoo about an hour ago, they won't just replace due to the age, it is way out of warranty. The will offer a refurbished unit at some unknown cost. Will need to wait and see. I was very happy that the responded as soon as they did.

i do have photos but not handy at the moment. I was already thinking of getting it welded back together. it is a crack at the bottom where the big honking bolt holds it all together. should be an easy welding job but i suspect a nightmare just getting the part out then back in.

i do not use a rocker plate, i have very limited space now that i share the garage where i use it with a small British car.

really really bummed this happens now as crappy weather and diminishing lighting approaches. timing could not be better.

FWIW, my home made rocker plate doesn't really take up much more of a 'footprint' than my trainer does. Not only does it make indoor cycling more comfortable, I believe there are fewer stresses on the frame and trainer itself, since the plate absorbs any side to side rocking forces generated. Over time, those forces could cause a stress crack. I have no scientific proof of this, but everything I had read about rocker plates seemed to indicate they were beneficial.

That's too bad, it is weldable though. I should go look for cracks.

The problem with wahoo is they really can't help you with a broken kickr. Except for some minor repairs, their whole model is just to replace them.

oh i can clearly see a crack. right at the bottom where the large bolt goes through. looks tedious to disassemble and have someone weld it up. in communication with whaoo about it now. it is out of warranty though so might be more that one or two $.

how old is that thing? meaning, how much did you get out of it before the fail?

When you have an old kickr, they seem to want the old one back and will give you $250 off a refurb. Let us know though.

So the crack is in the bracket itself? I think a welder could shield the parts that are difficult to take off and weld it without issue. Wahoo would probably give you the same small pittance for it if the repair somehow managed to smoke the electronics.

bought it in mid 2018, rode it once or twice then shelved it until crappy weather came. since then i have used it pretty extensively during the winter months or in the summer when too windy to ride outside. so, in winter about 5 days/wk...~200mi/wk.

wahoo is allowing me to send the unit back and buy a refurbished 2018 model for $350 + shipping. i am leaning toward this option rather than welding.

for anyone familiar with a kickr this is a view from the underside with the flywheel just to the right in the image. crack is near the bolt at bottom.


https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...881f55a73c.jpg

Thanks for the picture, that makes a lot of sense for a crack location. I feel like there is a good likelihood of a matching crack headed out of the big hole going the other way.

$350 is a pretty good deal. I would definitely go with that if they offered it to me.

Add in the shipping costs, and it may not be such a great deal.
That really doesn't look like a nightmare to get to (at least not to me, but then again, I worked on automobiles for a living.) You may want to bring it to a local auto mechanic, and ask if it could be disassembled (that part), drilled at the end of the crack to relieve the stress, welded, and reassembled. Guy could probably do it on his lunch break for a couple of $20 bills.

shipping was quoted at $40. a refurbished 2018 kickr for $390 is nothing to sneeze at considering how much i use it. and considering how much a new machine would run. i've seen new for over $1000 now. combination of winter, covid, and supply chain issues. it is a terrible confluence of factors.

With shipping that low (how do they do that? It costs me more to ship a fruitcake during the holidays!) go for the exchange deal. Just make sure the 'refurbished' unit doesn't arrive with the same crack!

Yikes sorry to hear that, one of my big fears is losing my trainer. I bought mine used in 2018 from a guy at work that used it maybe 6 times and decided indoor training wasn't for him, so I knew it was in good shape and he gave it to me for a great price. They have gone up in price considerably since 2018 and are hard to come by this year.

Go with the refurbished unit, sounds like a great deal.

Back up and running again. Kicker arrived with a broken foot, the large one at the back so needed to wait for a replacement. Then i stoopidly sent back the shim and had to wait for that along with the foot (i ride an 8-speed).

it sounds different from the 2017 model i had, not bad, just different, i'm sure the pawls are just of a different material.

good to be back up and running now that the really crappy weather is here. it was 17F this morning and my car has no heat and is a rag top to boot. brrr.

I'm jealous, I'm still down and out and really bummed out. Good to hear Wahoo offered you a replacement at a reasonable price. My Elite trainer no longer adjusts resistance so essentially I have a trainer that records cadence but when I try and Zwift the numbers are off the chart crazy so I just paused my membership. Thought maybe I could just use a training app to record speed, duration and was hoping distance but of course that can't happen unless you are physically or virtually moving somewhere. So, I just spin and watch videos.

Because it's out of warranty, Elite's only offer was to replace the broken mother board at a cost of 90 euros + 25 for shipping which works out to about $175 for a solution that might work? might not? I think I would rather take that money and just buy a new trainer. :(

I do miss Zwift

Even the fanciest smart trainer is pretty simple, I think I would go for the motherboard. $115 Euros is only $130 usd. Of course if you want a new trainer, we can pretend that's too much money to fix the old one.
Wahoo's motherboards look to be interchangeable but they won't sell you one. I think it's because they have no idea what it does and the consultants that did have moved on to other jobs.

i wrote a program a while back that allows me to control the smart trainer and record the activity. i did it for the times that i could not get out during the summer and i never subscribe to zwift in the summer because riding outside is sooo much better. anyway, it requires two things: ANT+ dongle and a Windwos PC. If you have these two items then i would be happy to modify it so that it connects to the trainer but does not attempt to control it. I think it would be a pretty easy thing to do. Cadence and heart rate monitor too.

Unterhausen, you're probably right that even though the CDN exchange rate is a bit more, it's definitely cheaper to fix the mother board then buy a new trainer. Initially I was geared on going this direction but then thought, why not consider looking at at a new one with better technology and hope to get more than 4 years from it? Still up to debate and not sure where I'm going. I thought maybe instead of investing close to $200 CDN I support a local bike shop.

spelger, can we talk a little further about this?

I'm not sure I would say newer trainers have better tech. Wahoo made their newer trainers quieter, added wired ethernet, and cadence. I'm not sure of anything else, these are the features that I would like to have. The pictures of the motherboards I have seen look very similar. They shuffle locations of the components, but didn't add any. It would be interesting to look up the FCC application and see how different they really are. Okay, I'm too lazy to do that but I would definitely read a writeup about it. These things definitely have a very cost-conscious design. I'm not sure about other brands.

i've sent you a PM.

spelger tell more about the app you made. interesting...

It is just a little program i wrote shortly after getting the Kickr. I knew i would use zwift but once our door riding comes around i don't want to be riding in the very hot garage but i knew there would be times when i had to. so...

i spent some time mostly working out how to re-ride a ride i had done in the past. i wanted to be able to load a .fit file and just ride it again. later i added teh ability to convert .gpx files because i find many rides like those from rouvy in that format. and later on i added workout stuff and custom grades and uploading the results to strava.

i am not a "software" guy. i write firmware for a living and generally stay away for UI work so the program is quite...utilitarian. but the intent was for me to ride occasionally with it during summer months. i still use it from time to time. in fact, i rode Geiger Grade yesterday on rouvy and compared to the recollection of my own application...rouvy sucked in this respect, the grade changes were just awful, and i should know becasue i've ridden Geiger Grade dozens of times in real life. but truth be told i am pretty sure it was due to data and not rouvy. but rouvy has a movie while mine is just a boring google map.

anyway, i mostly use my own app for VO2max sessions on thrusdays and maybe a zone 1/2 on tuesdays.

i've sent you a PM again.

If you read through the thread you would have found that Wahoo took care of me. I've been back riding for quite some time now. But thanks for the suggestion because that particular break looked to be fixable via welding. maybe next time.

He did read through the thread, it was a spammer that was just making copypasta posts so he could get to ten posts and post spam.