Axle heights…

I don’t know how common this is today for trainers, but here is a discovery from this morning. I was having a moment of winter cabin fever and was comparing setups on a couple of my road bikes. Before I pulled the tape on the frame in the trainer I thought I needed to verify axle heights to make sure my Seat height/bar height measurements were accurate compared to actual food height. Lo and behold I learned that my new Jetblack doesn’t need a front wheel block to be level with 25mm tires. Who’d have thought of that idea? Axles front and rear are the same w/o a block.

The Victory is a replacement for my old Suito Elite that Strava says has 13k miles on it. I’m not certain I ever measured the axle height on the old one, but this was a bit of a surprise for me.

I bought a JetBlack Victory just a couple months ago. My fist direct drive trainer. It never would have occurred to me that anyone would make a trainer that needed a front wheel block. But maybe they do that so people can put they front wheels up on a swivel? The Victory has been great, BTW, about 800 virtual miles so far.

Front wheel blocks are from the era of wheel-on trainers, because obviously you'd need to raise the rear wheel off the floor in order to allow it to spin. However, raising the front wheel a little bit can still be helpful for indoor riding with a direct-drive trainer because it offloads some weight off the hands.

Yeah, but when you mount a bike built for 32" wheels, then what?

Try it, maybe there is an adjustment!

Then you won't need a wheel block.

Yeah, and perpetually pointing downhill. I guess you could probably use this setup with the front tire taken off the front rim, lol.

??

A larger front wheel would have you perpetually pointing uphill on an indoor trainer, not downhill, because the height of the trainer's rear axle mount would be below the 32" wheel's axle height.