I hope it’s not a return of someone’s defective trainer. REI sold me a used/returned item with my last online purchase a couple months ago (bike lock) which I’d picked up for my kid heading off to college. I just took it since I didn’t have time to deal with any exchange.
I will say that the unit I got direct from Saris was packaged differently from the one I got from Outdoor Play. Outdoor Play one had a hole in the plastic bag containing the trainer, and extra tape all over the box. The one from Saris seemed packed neater and had less tape. Neither showed signs of use judging by the power cords being perfectly wrapped and boxed and freehubs were clean but it was a bit odd.
Having just repaired my washing machine, it also has a ribbed belt, but only the small drive pulley is ribbed, the large one on the washing drum is not. I think that this is typical, in that the large pulley has enough contact area to not need to be ribbed, at least in some applications. I guess the trainers can experience high enough torque for this not to work properly.
Interesting, good to know. I guess I’m not an engineer for a reason
Is there any way to check the H3 without pulling it apart to see if its got the textured pulley? Or has anyone heard if there is certain manufacture date to look for in which they should be ok?
I have only done sweet spot on mine so far but I don’t want to be surprised by the noise when i get to build.
If you want to test it just hammer the pedals hard when the trainer is at a total standstill. That’s about the only time you hear it when you apply a lot of force at once
You can look through the cover on the drive side and barely see the upper black pulley. If it’s shiny it’s smooth, I’m assuming the textured one will have more of a matte finish
You are correct, it does make a creaking ish noise for a couple pedal strokes, then it stops. Never noticed it the first couple rides.
Yea that’s the sign of the old pulley. I guess it bothers me more out of principle than anything, plus it’s not even in a sprint but if the flywheel is moving slow and I apply power very rapidly, it makes the noise.
We’ll see what happens with H3.3 tomorrow
Finally 3 hammers later I’ve got a good one. There should be no more problems with the new h3 going forward as they’re roughing up the pulleys at the factory now.
For people with existing units without the textured pulleys, probably makes no difference once it’s up to speed and warmed up, the pulley itself never slipped just made noise, and only will make noise when pedaled really hard from a stop.
I will give Saris a lot of credit, they were super quick to respond and ship new units at no cost, this is what my car looked like yesterday as I headed to drop off 2 units back to them, and they never charged me a penny.
@tariqhali, since there is a new firmware 31.060 I’d be curious to see another flywheel speed test. I started using Powermatch so it doesn’t really matter, and I find that in the gearing I do my ERG workouts in the power is usually 1% of my Stages, sometimes drifting closer to 2% at the end of a longer ride, but curious regardless. One of the updates is “H3 only: rolling resistance adjustment”, doesn’t sound like the fix we wanted but it’s there. Also cadence calculation is claimed to be updated but haven’t paid attention to it lately since I use the stages for that also
Glad you got one that worked. What’s the manufacture date stamped on the box for your new one?
Tried to look for that as part of the registration process but did not see it. Where would it be located? The “fix” is a few weeks old so I’d imagine most that were made from early to mid November are getting it
I just received mine. Definitely something scratches upon hard accelaration when the flywheel is standing still but that seems a non-issue to me. No knocking noise so far. Mine has two dates stamped on the box in black Aug 03 2019 and in red Sep 03 2019. Type of trainer is 9830TF.
Edit: Does someone know how to disconnect/stop the speedsensor from reporting data? Seems prettty useless in the TR-world. I haven’t moved one bit in my RAMP test other than the deep red sea of pain…
Not possible to disable speed. You could change your wheel circumference in the TR app to 0, is the one workaround I know.
Otherwise, ignore it.
thanks! tried that in the rouvy app but that wouldn’t accept 0 as a valid circumference.
Honestly, I haven’t tried that setting in TR either, so I don’t know if it works.
What’s the point of disabling speed? Do you want to be one of those self hating indoor riders who loathes indoor miles? Lol those guys are immensely annoying, one I follow literally complains on strava every time he posts an indoor ride how too bad it’s indoors, not as good as outdoors, indoors is boring. If I knew the guy better I’d tell him to follow rule 5 and freeze outside or STFU
Off topic rant over
yikes, had a bit of a scare updating the firmware this morning, it started and then ended suddenly, leaving my hammer 1 in the bootloader state (red light), fortunately running the update again seems to have worked. Would suck to have Saris brick a trainer, they’d owe me an H3 lol
From a brief 20-round handpedaling test: it works as in reports no speed data and accepts 0mm as a wheel circumference diameter.
Something about it just irks me. In my book hours spent on a bike is a metric for training and km ridden for cycling - YMMV.
So just ignore the Mi or Km and count your hours, life goes on as normal lol. If you want to segregate your training hours from outdoor miles I’m sure there’s a workaround for that.
My H3 has arrived on Saturday, here are my first experiences:
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The overall build looks good and solid. I had no problems exchanging the end caps, installing cassette and setting it up.
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I used Saris app on iOS to check the firmware update and was offered one, everything worked on a first try, no problem at all. It took approx. 5 minutes to get the last firmware.
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The manual lacks any information about the LED signals and colors, also it does not mention whether the trainer will sleep automatically after workout or if one should unplug it after each ride. I was also not certain whether I can perform the calibration immediatelly out of the box or should warm the trainer up first.
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First ride - I tested with my MTB with 36/22t rings upfront, I could hear immediately the unpleasant sound of slipping belt when I started pedalling. It went away after few seconds once the flywheel was rolling. Same happened during 800W sprint from slow flywheel speed. The sound is annoying but I don’t think it has any impact on functionality - at least I can’t feel any slippage on the pedals or see it on power output from my P2M NG Eco powermeter. I am dissappointed though and hope it will disappear with further usage as someone has mentioned earlier. If not, I will contact the Saris / reseller to resolve the issue.
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Appart from sprints / starts, the trainer is really quiet and I can hear only drive train and fans, imo there is no point making the trainers any more silent, the chain and gearing will be always the louder part of setup. But again, with MTB gearing, I am not really able to make the flywheel roll fast enough to be loud.
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No vibrations whatsoever, very silent and smooth, I can imagine using this in apartment with no problems.
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Stability is great, even during sprints.
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Power accuracy. Out of the box, the trainer was reporting roughly 25W lower than my PM. The Saris app can do the calibration, so I did that 10 minutes into the ride. The app does not display your current speed (only ‘go faster / slower’ type of instruction), but it worked for me on a first try. The trainer was still reporting about 10W lower, but hopefully that’s ok (that could be the difference between crank and hub based powermeters). During more intense intervals (400W), the difference got much bigger though, I will continue monitoring this. I noticed this also on Direto, but the margin was not that big. Seems like the slope of my NG eco is different than of those trainers.
Note I am not really able to check the accuracy and power drifting during high speeds (reported by Tariq) because of the MTB gearing. -
Erg mode was responding quickly, it took 2 - 3 seconds (with Powermatch on). Happy hear. Target power stability was fine.
Overall impression: I am honestly little disappointed because of the belt issue and also because the difference between this and original Direto I have tried in past is not that big (but the price is 
). I hope the belt issue will go away or will be resolved by Saris. The power accuracy is not perfect also, but this could be problem of my powermeter. I will post some updates later.