Recreation / Bike Accessories / Mag Trainer- Road Like Feel Off-Season

This trainer allows you to cycle indoors during the off season on your own bike, with a tension similar to the feel of riding on a road rather than like an exercise bike.

This was a gift and I can’t determine exactly what model it is.  It appears to be most like the current Minoura Mag 850D Trainer, which retails for $220.

This is a simple triangular framed stand that lifts the back wheel of a road bike off the floor by about 4 inches.  The top bar of the trainer clamps on your back axle with a hand wheel that tightens down.  It will work with either regular nuts or quick release axles. The wheel itself touches a cylinder which has two adjustments.  There is a coarse adjustment wheel that allows you to place the cylinder in contact with the wheel.  Then you use the fine adjustment to get the tension just the way you want it.  The larger disk on the side is a flywheel to keep the motion going better.

When being ridden it makes a sort of whirring noise with a bit of a whine.  We definitely have to turn the TV up to hear over it because it’s in the same room.  Some days the noise really annoys me and other days it doesn’t so much.  But my ears don’t like high pitches, so I suspect that it bothers me more than it would most people.

It’s not very easy to switch out different bikes, so we just have one bike set up on it.  This is not handy for multiple people who are different sizes, but really nice for one person who wants to ride one bike.

Hubby says it’s not extremely difficult to take off and put on, but just enough so that he didn’t want to hook it up until he was pretty sure that the chances to ride outside were really done for the season.

The company also makes models with a remote tension adjustment so that you can change the fine tuning while riding.  This isn’t a big deal as far as we are concerned, but since there is this “better” option I only gave this a 4.9 rating.