Originally Posted by
unterhausen
What trainer did you have and what broke? I never paid attention to zwift selling hardware, but they sent an email promoting a sale on a steering device for a reasonable price. I definitely thought about it.
Not strictly a trainer. I have been riding on Sportcrafters rollers (with a progressive resistance roller) that was on a platform I built to provide forward and aft motion. Since I never managed to learn proper roller balance, I ride it with a fork stand.
Anyway, the fork stand is made with a round tube that holds the quick release in place and the tube runs through the 2 rectangular supports that make up the stand:
About a year ago, the welds holding the two rectangular supports together cracked (I'm a hefty guy who is also tall, rides tall frames and likes to try to sprint, so long lever lots of force). The person who makes/sells these said that he no longer made them so couldn't sell me a replacement but graciously rewelded the tubes back together and repainted it (for free) and shipped it back to me.
After another year of hard treatment, the round central tube holding the quick release broke loose and started rocking up and down a bit when I put heavy force on it. The repeated impacts of that led to the metal tubes above the tube getting cracks as they were slammed into over and over and forced to flex. I didn't notice it until after the last ride when the plastic end caps at the top of the tubes had gotten knocked out by all the flexing. Both tubes on at least the outer, visible face have enough cracks (in a V or diamond shape) that run all the way to the top or almost all the way that I expect a few more hard sprints (or easy rides at this point if I'm not perfectly motionless) would lead to the metal above the central tube breaking free and me tipping over.
To be fair to the manufacturer, when I told him last time how I used the fork stand, he told me that it was intended for short term use as a training aid to learn to ride rollers and not for riding thousands of km of doing races, sprints and intervals and suggested another solution before welding it back together. Honestly, it's a setup I've really enjoyed - forward and backward motion from my platform, some side to side motion as the back wheel rides the roller, increased resistance as wheelspeed increases, very low wear on the tires compared to wheel on trainers, very easy to get on and off, no need to do spindown calibrations (just hit the calibrate power meter button on my garmin for my pedals or powertap hub), same powermeter indoors as out, not much more noise than my drive train (and less than the box fan that's 3 feet from me (probably louder than the used kickr headwind I found locally at a great price but not terribly so).
I figured if I was going to have to get a new trainer, I wanted a smart, direct drive trainer. While I would have wanted a Wahoo Kickr, that was probably beyond what my wife would have agreed to spend (especially if I wanted to go all out and get a Climb too). When I saw Zwift was offering the Elite Direto XR for $650, I ordered one. Figured if I wanted to be able to steer or have the elevation of the front of the bike change, I could try getting a Rizer down the road (appears that I could get it shipped from Europe for ~$700 compared to buying it locally for almost as much as the Wahoo Kickr I decided was too expensive).