Sacrificial Bike for Trainer?
 

Does a market exist for these?

I got a Tacx Neo 2t for Fathers Day and am looking to set it up but would perfer not to have to shlep on of my bikes from the basement storage to the third floor to where I will have the trainer set up.

Is there a place to find crash damaged frames that would suffice for trainer duty? Am I stupid for thinking along these lines??

I'm not sure what a crash damaged frame would do for you. If it breaks, you'll still wind up on the ground, it's just in your basement instead of on the road.

OTOH, the bike on my trainer has a frame that I bought for $30 and built up out of spares.
Might be tough to find such a thing right now though. I think having a dedicated trainer bike is a great idea.

i think the OP would just get a virtual booboo at virtual speed.

try craig's list for something cheap. there is usually plenty. or you can get one of those Euro bikes i've read about on amazon.

I was thinking of a metal frame that was dented more than you’d be able to repair satisfactorily for road use rather than something that would be liable to break and put you on the ground.

What happens to frames like that when they are condemned by the bike shop or manufacturer?

If it's crash damaged, my lbs offers to send the frame to metal recycling

Warranty, it gets cut up.

Hmmm. That sounds like there is definitely not a market for what I am looking for.

Thanks.

I don't think I'd use a very expensive road bike on a fixed wheel trainer... unless someone else paid for the bike.

Possibly on a roller trainer.

It wouldn't hurt to put up a Craigslist ad... "Wanted Damaged/Abused road bike or frame".

I'd be less concerned with a frontend damaged frame on a trainer than on the road.

people tend to overvalue crashed bikes. To me, if I can't ride a bike on the road, it's worth zero. My next trainer bike is going to use a frame I found in the trash, but I'm going to fix it first.

I think it's worth looking, but recognize that your trainer bike should work well

Bumping this thread up.

I haven't really come across anything yet that I would like to purchase/build strictly for the trainer, so I am now thinking about using my Lemond Zurich. However, this bike works well and has sentimental value and I don't want it to get trashed.

I'm curious whether anyone has tips to avoid damage to an older steel bike in this situation. I imagine sweat is the primary issue. Anything else? What about the front wheel/tire? Do they suffer from sitting in one position? I have a spare of both that I guess I should probably just throw on there.

Parts such as stem bolts and headsets can suffer from rust, as your sweat can drip into these areas. Keeping a towel over the front end while training helps.

I don't think the front wheel suffers at all from being kept in the one spot all the time. I do rotate mine from time to time for no other reason than it puts my mind at ease.

I'm using a carbon 90s-era Trek (which I bought specifically for the purpose; upgraded the drivetrain with Microshift parts to bring it into the 21st century) on my stationary, and it definitely looks the worse for it. I do keep a sweat guard over the top tube and stem, but the finish on the cranks is rough, the bottle-cage "braze ons" are corroded, and sweat nearly seized the seatpost (my wife and I both use it, so it gets raised/lowered frequently). I wound up putting a bit of aluminum anti-seize paste on it.

My oldest road bike is now a dedicated trainer bike. If you don't have similar, buy an old used bike that fits. As long as the frame geometry is right and the drive train is good (or can be easily replaced), you're set.

Sweat is a huge issue for destroying bikes. If it's an old bike about which you care little, it's no big deal. But definitely throw a thick towel over the bars. And buy something like this

Thanks guys. I guess that confirms my original suspicion. I’ll keep looking on CL.

I did stop by my local bike co-op and they had a bike about two sizes too small that I could probably get the geometry right with some creativity. Is that a bad idea?

Unfortunately, due to the pandemic, it's not the best time to find a bike at a good price but just keep looking. I bought my first road bike (2010 Opus, aluminum frame, 18 speed, Alexrims) off a buy & sell site for $250 which was a steal. Rode it outside for many years but got to the point where I didn't want to keep switching from the trainer to outside so dedicated it as a sacrificial trainer bike. Worth it.

Regarding choosing a bike that's not the right fit, I would not recommend that. You end up spending a lot of time on that bike in the winter months and if it doesn't fit right, you will feel that after many hours of the same motion.

That's what I did. My dedicated trainer bike is on the small side for me, and the way I've got it set up is different from my road position in lots of little ways. I rationalize this away by the fact that my erg sessions are rarely more than 90 minutes, so I can live with the imperfect fit for that duration. If I were routinely putting in multi-hour erg sessions, I'd want a better fit.

Geometry on a stationary is less sensitive in some ways because you don't need to worry about how a long stem + short top tube will have different handling than a short stem + long top tube. Standover clearance is less of an issue. I think if you can get your hip-knee-ankle relationship right, you're probably good.

Does it have room for spacers on the steerer? I suppose you could get an outlandishly long stem and a steerer extension. I started out with downtube shifters, which works fine with erg training like trainerroad, but if you are going to JRA on zwift, you'll want the kind of shifting you are used to, whatever that might be.

They actually had a steering tube extender(sion?) at the co-op. And a box full of stems.

Thats what I was thinking too. I figured that even if I end up a bit more upright it should work if the pedaling motion/position were close.

But things do start looking pretty hinky with the steering exten-der/sion...

Other than sweat, I think there isn't much difference to the bike being on the road, or on a trainer. Have a towel handy, and use a good fan when riding indoors. Look into a rocker plate if you want. I built my own and it made riding more 'road like' as the bike can move side to side a bit.

Personally I have no concerns about riding a fancy bike (or carbon wheels) on an indoor trainer.

Sweat can definitely cause damage, but this is easily solved with covering the headset and top tube with towels or one of those sweat net things, and giving the bike a wipe down once in a while.

Otherwise I don't think there's anything about an indoor trainer that causes any unique stress or potential damage to a bike or wheels. Maybe rotate the front wheel every few rides if you're really concerned about spoke fatigue, but even this seems like a non-issue to me.

Any idea as to whether a wheel on trainer, pushing into the rear tire with the roller could impact the wheel? I had to adjust my bike and remove it from the trainer and put it back on but before I tightened the roller to the tire, I gave the wheel a good spin and it was significantly un true.

I don't remember it being that way when I put it on initially 1.5 years ago.

I've never heard of wheel on trainers causing damage to wheels. I suppose you could crank down a trainer roller so tight that it could pop a spoke or start to deform the wheel, but this seems like it would require a lot of force. Assuming you aren't going bananas with the tension I think normal pressure from the roller would be less than the impacts a wheel would encounter during typical outdoor riding.

On my wheel-on Kickr Snap, I air my 28mm tire up to 90psi (which is higher than I would ride outdoors, but still well below the listed max pressure for that tire), and then I tighten the knob on the trainer until the tire just makes contact with the roller - From there I give it two full turns. This seems to be just enough roller pressure to prevent tire slip on hard efforts. The tire does squish a bit where it contacts the roller, but no more so than what I would see when riding outdoors.

And for what it's worth, I've put around 2000 miles on a set of low-spoke count carbon wheels on my wheel-on indoor trainer over the last year or so and haven't had any issues. These are cheap generic Chinese carbon wheels (Superteam). They're still perfectly true. I occasionally ride these outside and on rollers as well.

thanks msu2001la, good to know. I don't see how it could have affected the wheel but just found it weird that it got out of shape when it hasn't seen pavement in ages or had any weight resting on it.

Caveat: I'm not as cost sensitive as some; I ride a lot.

That said, I have 4-5 bikes and just decided to put the Specialized Roubaix on the KICKR CORE and leave it there a couple of years back and that's worked out well. I bought it used, it's a 3x9 and while I enjoy riding it outside, it was only ever ridden when I was on super-nasty surfaced routes.

I'd choose a budget and get a dedicated frame. FWIW, I also found that after logging a few thousand miles indoor, riding technique is not entirely identical, and it was ultimately helpful to not be thinking in terms of "this bike / that bike" but "indoor set up / outdoor set up." I'm already failing to keep this short, but some of what I am discussing boils down to how I do a LOT less free-wheeling indoors and for some reason just don't get up out of the saddle as much as outdoors. Also I'm old and have various issues, so posture is always a concern.

In getting a 'sacrificial' bike the one huge warning I'd give is that if you're overly cheap, you might really wind up disliking the indoor experience and/or even wind up with a nagging injury because you don't put as much care into the set up.

I put my old Ridley Excalibur on my trainer. Like others have said, make sure to wipe it down when you are done with a ride. I don’t do much sprinting on it, so that probably helps minimize lateral stress.