Would welcome a quick reaction from the group here.
Thinking about using an old, early 90s Cannondale road bike (close to an SR400) as the trainer rig. Don’t want to permanently modify it. It’s got too much sentimental value. And I’d still like to be able to take it outside. It’s got 12-speed SIS with thread-on Shimano 600 rear cassette. Given that H3 is wheel off, I’m assuming I could just find the cheapest 8 speed cassette and use QR attachments, etc. and could make it all work given that I use ERG mode almost 100% of the time. So don’t care really about shifting, etc.
One item that gives me pause is that Saris says its minimum rear dropout clearance is 130mm. My Cannondale measures just about 126mm. Some internet reading tells me that the bike was designed to adapt to either 126mm or 130. But I don’t like the idea of ‘tweaking’ the frame those 4mm.
Anyone have experience with a bike of this vintage? Is it just too old to use on a modern smart trainer?
My instruction book for the H3 says 130mm Road Bike with QR, 135mm for MTB with QR; 142mm Road/MTB with thru-axle or 148mm MTB with thru-axle.
Agree with ERG mode and as long as your chain will work with a “cheap cassette” (I’d personally match the bike with a proper speed one) it would be ok.
Sorry for the crude picture but here are the 130mm adapters, depending on which side you need a few mm bigger maybe could be made by someone.
I put an NX eagle cassette on the trainer and its making a weird noise I can’t figure out what it is. The cassette is really close to the trainer but it doesn’t touch. Do I need a spacer or something?
I put the spacer on mine. Shifted poorly and would need to adjust limit screws but I didn’t want to mess with it so found the best gear and kept it in erg mode.
I was thinking about just taking one of the small spacers from the bottom of the cassette and using that for a bit of room or do you think its better to use the big spacer?
I just used the small spacer that came with the trainer… but I think any will work. My issue was that without the spacer, it shifted well but I couldn’t tighten the thru bolt down. The official stance I got from Saris via email is that it’s not comparable with a 12 speed cassette… this is probably why. But like I said, it did work in erg mode just fine and was super quiet.
My power supply went out, and had to replace it. Found this on Amazon, and it has the same power specs, and the correct barrel connector. It is working fine for me. The output cable length is ‘normal’, so not as long as the unusually long one on the stock supply.
I’ve been troubleshooting an issue with my H3: over the past months my trainer hasn’t been working right. I cracked the tophat spacer (now replaced), but I’ve noticed a big power discrepancy between indoors and outdoors that has persisted even after replacing the tophat. After doing pretty extensive testing outdoors on some steep climbs (and using both spider based and hub based power meters outdoors) I’m pretty certain the H3 is under-reading by 10%.
Is there anything else that might have been damaged by riding with a busted tophat spacer that I should look at or try to fix? I added grease to the freehub/tophat but did nothing else. I find the power discrepancy very annoying and want to get to the bottom of it even though I can use powermatch (and would like to know one way or the other if my trainer is off or my two power meters). I haven’t been able to get Saris to reply though their customer service has usually been good with other issues.
Tophat shouldn’t be a problem here. Maybe you should tight transmission belt and try to warmup (~180W@5min) and calibrate H3. My units calibrates with ~13.5s with this procedure and works very good in terms of power measuring.
My Saris H3 seems to be dead except has a blinking red light, cannot connect via bluetooth. Light was dimmed on the H3 supply so bought an aftermarket one, same problem persists. No response from Saris support…
Sorry I Think the only easy thing to fix is a replacement power adapter, which you already tried. It certainly was plausible that the power adapter wasn’t providing adequate voltage/power and replacing it would help, but it seems that is not the case.
List of LED error codes, assuming you are getting the first red blinking error which is a Radio communication error, you are going to need to contact Saris.
Thanks - I hadnt seen that. I just turned on again to see how fast the red LED was flashing and now I dont get any LED at all, which I am guessing is not a good sign. I will email Saris again and see if I get a response.
I want to use my gravel or mtb on the trainer. I know sram nx cassette wont work because the pins touch when you put down power. Will any aftermarket eagle cassettes work?
I had that happen with a new one, in less than a couple days. I tried to call the reseller, got nowhere, and contacted Saris. I had a choice, return it to the reseller (and be done with them) or get a swap from Saris for a refurbed unit.
I FINALLY got the reseller to accept the return, and ordered from REI. The new one was/is flawless.
I did get a response from Saris, but they said unfortunately they could not offer repair / replacement outside of the US… I originally bought from Wiggle and they went out of business. So I cut my losses and got a Wahoo Core (they have a UK presence so hoping for better support if anything goes wrong…).
Ouch! Didn’t realize you were not in the US, but still, why would that matter? I thought the EU (are you in the EU?) is supposed to stand up for their citizens.
Sucks that Wiggle died. They were pushed on GCN quite a bit. I’m still waiting to see who on this side of the pond has died. I’ve been unsure who to order from, who is still ‘alive’, and who could I get stuck paying for something that I don’t get, or something that effectively have no warranty at all. It’s a crappy time for people to buy tech of all kinds. Ouch…
I actually just got two pairs of dhb bibs last week from Wiggle, shipped to the US. Is it a skeleton crew, another vendor who bought the name, or something like that? The order itself went through without a hitch, and delivery was pretty quick.
I Think the only easy thing to fix is a replacement power adapter, which you already tried. It certainly was plausible that the power adapter wasn’t providing adequate voltage/power and replacing it would help, but it seems that is not the case.