cruzbike style rocker plate for indoor trainer

[Kenneth]

Rocker plates mimic the side to side motion of a diamond frame bike.
I wanted to do the same for the movement of my S40, so I installed a large lazy-Susan under a platform that holds my trainer
It mimics the back and forth movement of the front of the bike fairly well.

 

[benphyr]

That is neat. How do you get the bottom to not slide on the floor?

 

[Don1]

screws?

 

[Kenneth]

That is neat. How do you get the bottom to not slide on the floor?

I went to Lowe's and bought some non-slide pads that are sticky on one side and covered the bottom of the lazy-Susan. So the wood base freely moves and the lazy-base stays put. When I get off the bike I put a block on either side so the the platform dosen't rotate and knock the bike over.

 

[Bill K]

That looks like it would also work on a wheel-off trainer like the Tacx Neo.
How do you like riding it? Does it feel more natural, or use more upper body?

 

[benphyr]

I went to Lowe's and bought some non-slide pads that are sticky on one side and covered the bottom of the lazy-Susan. So the wood base freely moves and the lazy-base stays put. When I get off the bike I put a block on either side so the the platform dosen't rotate and knock the bike over.

And how big is the lazy susan? Was it just hardware that you mounted on something or was it part of something else?

 

[BJ686]

Nice work. Does it just make the bike rock side to side (like a traditional rocker plate)? Or does it actually allow the natural Cruzbike movement of the front wheel turning (not rocking) side to side? If you were able to have gotten this working on Lazy Susan, I’m guessing the latter.

 

[Kenneth]

That looks like it would also work on a wheel-off trainer like the Tacx Neo.
How do you like riding it? Does it feel more natural, or use more upper body?

It feels more natural and you can use your arms more than when its stationary but I don't think they work as hard as when riding normal because there is no balance required.

 

[Kenneth]

And how big is the lazy susan? Was it just hardware that you mounted on something or was it part of something else?

I just mounted the plywood to the lazy- Susan I bought on Amazon.

 

[Kenneth]

Nice work. Does it just make the bike rock side to side (like a traditional rocker plate)? Or does it actually allow the natural Cruzbike movement of the front wheel turning (not rocking) side to side? If you were able to have gotten this working on Lazy Susan, I’m guessing the latter.

It allows the natural movement of a cruzbike. I considered combining this with a " normal" rocker plate but wanted to see how this felt by itself before I did that.

 

[Kenneth]

Unforeseen problems....
When I first test rode the bike with this i didn't use the wheel weights that came with the Stac Zero. I wanted to be able to pull the bike off quickly to use outside as i do almost every day. It all worked pretty good except without the weights it was much harder to change gears because the wheel had no interia and stopped spinning immediately. The answer was to use the wheel weights but this changed the balance of the rocker board making it jump. I readjusted were the lazy- Susan sits in relation to the center of the trainer and mounted it to a plywood base underneath the lazy-Susan for good measure. There was still a slight jump but within a reasonable margin of acceptance, until I went down a 11 percent slope..... it felt like I was riding down a railroad track pumping over the railroad ties. Completely out of any reasonable margin of acceptability. I believe this is being caused by the stac zero wheel weights only being on one axis and not a true fly wheel , combined with the slight play in lazy-Susan itself. At any rate it's back to the drawing board to see if I can overcome this issue. I do like the front end not being fixed in place but not at the expense of a normal smooth ride