StagesBike. Anyone else have one?

Nice find! I’ll give that a go on my next visit :slight_smile: Thanks.

I’m happier and happier with my StagesBike. Love it.

I’m motivated to train much more on it than I ever was on the Kickr. Plus, never having to remove the rear wheel on my road bike again! In the end, that’s what matters. The training works well, and it helps me want to do it. QED.

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How are you finding the power stability on intervals? I’m asking because DC Rainmaker flagged this in his review as “needs work” (my paraphrase).

I’m no expert, but it feels fine to me. Here’s a recent 15-minute interval:

While the power does vary, I think that’s a pretty real reflection of me. I’m not that smooth or steady, and I’m pushing 90% of FTP in this interval. I do not feel like the bike is over- or under-compensating. It doesn’t do any smoothing like the Kickr did, but in practice it feels very similar to me.

A few new habits need to be learned, but that’s just brand differences. At the start of an interval, a Kickr immediately increases resistance very sharply and you need to stomp on the pedals for a second or two to adapt. On the StagesBike, you simply keep pedaling at your prior cadence without any extra stomping, and the bike adjusts power smoothly within the first few seconds of the interval. Personal preference, I think, but I like the StagesBike method better. If doing Tabata-style short-short intervals, I’d be in Resistance mode anyway on either trainer.

The ONLY thing that feels a little strange is when going from high power (say, 190W) down to a rest interval (say 100W). Sometimes when I reduce power significantly like that in ERG mode, power drops down too far, like to 40-50W, and then takes about 10-15 seconds to go back to where it should be. But only when going from high power to low, and only sometimes. This, I think, is a bug, and I’m sure they’ll fix it in an update.

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DCRainmaker mentioned that - issue going from high to low power. Apparently that is an artifact of the flywheel weight - lots of momentum.

If that’s the “cost” of having that huge flywheel and having the bike feel so smooth and comfortable overall, then I’m quite happy with that trade-off. :+1:t2:

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Everybody talking about smooth power. Show me those smooth power files when you are riding outside. The idea of a indoor trainer for me is to train for outside races. Who cares if the power is jumpy because power is jumpy outside when riding and racing as well.

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Follow-up question: can you install pedals at 170 length spot via hex wrench? That is, does installing / removing pedals require the pedals to work with a pedal wrench? I’m asking because I use Time pedals, and for install / removal they are hex wrench only.

You can rotate the crank to get an allen key in there, but it’s a major pain. It can work, it’ll just take 1000 little turns.

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Thanks :confused:

I installed mine at 170…pain in the @$$ for sure.

Interested I in any updated thoughts and opinions users have after spending some more time on the bike and after some software updates

Give me a couple of weeks, and I will add in a review. Mine comes Wednesday :grinning::+1:t2:

The comparison will be to a Gen1 (gen 0.5 as it predates the official gen1 release date) Wahoo Kickr / InsideRide Kickr E-Flex combo

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I continue to really like my SB20, and am completely satisfied with my purchase. I realized the other day that my fit wasn’t quite right, either I’m tightening up over the winter months, or just other changes in my riding form, and the adjustability of this bike is so good I was able to pretty quickly dial in a better fit. And it remains rock solid and quiet, just a quality piece of hardware.

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well i personally adore my SB20. for me it’s the best smart trainer on the market hands down

Any advice re zero reset?
Using the stages app, sometimes it will zero reset successfully and sometimes it won’t, even though I’m doing the same thing each time.
Anyone else have this?

How do people handle workouts like Spanish Needle with the SB20? I’ve read a lot about the intervals being so short that the ERG mode doesn’t react quick enough to settle for this type of interval.

My SB20 is coming today and I’m moving from a KICKR.

The KICKR ‘looks’ like it responds quickly but I now wonder whether that’s down to smoothing the KICKR firmware applies and it’s actually struggling too, or whether it’s down to the size of the flywheel being much larger on the Stages and taking time to ramp up?

If only Stages could implement a sliding scale in the Link app so that you could pick how much smoothing or response time to ERG changes you wanted!

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I don’t have experience with the bike (still contemplating a purchase) and quite what you are looking for, but what I was thinking would be a good option is the customize the “dream drive” for short hard sprints like this. You could figure out what gear works best for the recovery and what works best for the interval and with a touch of a button switch between them.

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For me I think it’s entirely a smoothing thing from Kickr that creates a false sense of precision there - I also went from Kickr to SB20, and I find the transitions on the SB20 are just as smooth, even if the graph says otherwise. I definitely feel like it ramps up quickly and I get the work in.

Maybe change the power from 3s to 1s for workouts like that? Haven’t tried, just a speculation that might make it look better…

Hey, thanks for starting this thread. I’m interesting for recommendations for setting this up? We are getting ours on Thursday. I know that the power smoothing / flywheel size presents a bit of a delay, but I actually experience a delay on my Kickr Core now. When I have sprints, it takes ~5 seconds for the ERG to catch up so I am always about ~15 watts below the average when I wrap the 30 second sprint.