Hey guys! I am trying to get a better, and more easily accessible indoor setup going. I do a fair amount of riding inside and outside and it’s a pain to keep switching out my bike’s thru axles and taking it on and off the trainer, not to mention I am a heavy sweater. I have access to a flat bar hybrid bike for cheap. What would be the downside to putting that permanently on a direct drive trainer if I put a road saddle on it? Here are the geometries of my road bike (Emonda alr 5) vs the hybrid bike (fx 1). Obviously switching out the pedals to my speedplays.
Looking at the trek website the crank length on the fx is 170 vs 175 on my emonda. Pretty much everything else is adjustable with saddle position, stem length, bar height etc. would the crank length matter in terms of specificity?
I’ll let someone else better versed in that step in. Having your main bike on the trainer is ideal I would think, but if it comes to being too bothered to swap out bikes and missing a session or not riding as often I’d keep the FX on there and at least train.
As long as you can get the seat X,Y relative to the pedals in roughly the same spot, I think it would be fine.
I keep my TT bike on the trainer and use my road bike outside. They have different slightly different geometry, but I don’t have any issues switching between them as long as I haven’t been off of one in a long time.
Reach is similar, but that only measures BB center to headtube center. Flat bars are like riding on the bar tops. Perfectly fine for general training, but I like getting on the hoods or in the drops to work on my position. You won’t be able to do that with the flat bar (although you could slap on some MTB bar ends).
The stack on the hybrid is a full inch shorter. Not a big deal if the steertube is long enough to throw in some spacers.
How cheap is cheap? I think overall it should be fine, but there are cheap dropbar road bikes available, which would be my preference.
Cheap is a new one for under $200. Plus I could use it to spin to the grocery store if I really needed to. Really just wondering if I’ll get as effective a workout in since position isn’t a huge deal as long as I’ll be able to put out power since I’ll still be doing the majority of my easy and recovery days outside.
One thing to consider though is that $200 Hybrid bike is probably going to be 8 or 9 speed, so its not going to be compatible with your 11 speed Emonda cassette you’re using.
Just something to think about, any time you decide to throw your road bike on the trainer you’ll probably need to swap out the cassette.
