How Kurt Kinetic Turned The Fluid Bike Trainer World On It's Head
Although fluid bike trainers have always had a strong place in the indoor bike trainer world, it wasn't until Kurt Kinetic entered the arena with their proprietary design that the Achilles heel of fluid trainers was eliminated. Until they came along, cyclists could just about count on their fluid trainers developing a leak and slowly draining their resistive fluid onto the floor.
The problem had always been the fact that the spinning shaft of the bicycle trainer had to penetrate into the fluid-filled chamber containing the spinning impeller and the fluid (typically silicone). O-rings were put in place to create a seal, but with the normal wear and tear, coupled with the intense heat generated during a vigorous workout, it was only a matter of time until the O-rings failed.
Kurt Kinetic's Solved The Leakage Problem
What Kurt Kinetic has done, as evidenced in their design of the Kurt Kinetic Road Machine, is to completely seal off the fluid chamber. The impeller's in the chamber containing the silicone fluid, but there's no shaft coming out. Instead, there's a flywheel up against (but outside) the chamber which is magnetically bonded to the impeller.
Both the impeller and the matching flywheel are embedded with six strong magnets. These magnets line up with each other, and although they are on opposite sides of the sealed chamber (the impeller's inside and the flywheel's outside) they turn in tandem.
If you're wondering how strong the magnetic bond is, the company accelerated the trainer from zero to sixty using an electric motor without the bond separating. I can tell you after spending hundreds of hours on my Road Machine that it'd take a Herculean effort on the part of a cyclist to create enough power to ever get to sixty miles per hour on a fluid trainer. So rest assured, you're highly unlikely to spin the flywheel and the impeller apart.
An Extra Degree Of Realism
The most recent horse in the Kinetic stable is the Kurt Kinetic Rock and Roll. The frame on this unit is designed to be able to rock back and forth. What this does is force the rider to work on efficient pedaling.
If the rider's doing too much 'mashing' on the pedals, or somehow spinning the pedals inefficiently, the excess rocking on the trainer won't hesitate to send the signal to the cyclist that he'd better clean up his pedaling act.
The Rock and Roll's movement serves to eliminate the complaint some cyclists have against bike trainers; most indoor bike trainers enable the rider to mindlessly develop poor pedaling technique.
More Inertia Please
Another gripe against bike trainers by riders intent on simulating a typical ride outdoors (whatever that is) is that a trainer will 'spin up' too easily or won't coast like a bicycle does outdoors.
It could be argued that getting too focused on how close a trainer simulates a 'real' outdoor ride can be overdone. After all, on downhill rides it's very easy to 'spin-up' and on uphill rides it's pretty difficult to get any 'coast' out of your bike.
But Kurt Kinetic does make the Kurt Kinetic Pro with an additional 12 pounds of flywheel. It's like a Road Machine on steroids.
Kurt Kinetic's Here To Stay
It wasn't too long ago that Kinetic was the new kid on the block, but with their patented 'no leak' design, they've risen to dominate the fluid trainer market. The Road Machine's currently the most popular fluid trainer out there, and now that Kinetic's turned their attention to innovations like the Rock and Roll, it's likely they'll stay at the front of the pack for years to come.
About the author: Ron Fritzke is a cycling product reviewer with a passion for ‘all things cycling’. A former 2:17 marathoner, he now directs his competitive efforts toward racing his bike…and looking for good cycling products.
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