Silent Magnetic Resistance exercise bike is dead
September 21, 2006 9:04 PM   Subscribe

Silent Magnetic Resistance exercise bike is dead. Can I manually adjust the resistance?

My exercise bike is electronically dead. I could hire a technician and/or buy new parts.... but really all I care about is the ability to adjust the resistance.

There is a set of magnets that sits near the flywheel. It seems that if I move the magnets closer to the flywheel then resistance increases??

I can easily jam something in there to keep the magnets closer, or fashion a pulley system to move the magnets back and forth (in case I need an excuse to not exercise).

Does moving the magnets closer to the flywheel increase resistance?

If you're good at this stuff, here's a diagram of the bike parts. Page 27 has the parts in question, where part #35 is the magnet set and part #34 is the flywheel.

Thank you!
posted by powpow to Sports, Hobbies, & Recreation (3 answers total)
 
Best answer: Does moving the magnets closer to the flywheel increase resistance?

Yes. The link discusses so-called "eddy-current" magnetic brakes (this is essentially a brake).
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 10:10 PM on September 21, 2006


Best answer: Mechanically, this looks more like a standard band type resistance brake, with part #38 Resistance Motor, being the tensioning element for the #35 band against the #34 flywheel. The main resistance could come from friction between the band and flywheel, with some additional "magnetic eddy current" braking I suppose, but if you're going to manually adjust these values, you'll do it at the point where the #38 Resistance Motor would normally operate.
posted by paulsc at 10:54 PM on September 21, 2006


Response by poster: Thank you both.

If it's just mechanical:
Does that mean I've got to get the magnet piece to touch the flywheel for any meaningful resistance?

FYI the magnet set has a metal covering on the bottom two magnets, but they don't appear to have any wear on them (like they never touched and rubbed against the flywheel). Of course, I bought the thing used and never cranked it up to full resistance when it was working properly.
posted by powpow at 8:12 AM on September 22, 2006


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