The weather last night was cold and rainy so I put my mountain bike (with Specialized Fat Boy 1.25″ slicks) on my new Kinetic Road Machine fluid trainer and watched PBS HD for about an hour and a half. PBS HD has got to be one of the best high definition stations I get. There’s just something so cool about watching Nova and Nature in high definition that rocks my world.

So, I’m crazy-happy about my new Kinetic Road Machine bicycle trainer. Before I picked it up at REI a bout three weeks ago, I researched several including cycling trainers from CycleOps and Performance Cycles. These two other trainers work well however, I was looking for a fluid trainer and both these trainers’ rollers are direclty connected to the impeller with o-rings which are used to keep the fluid in the resistance unit. The problem with this is that o-rings wear out, become brittle and can leak when the fluid heats up and expands, forcing itself between the rings and the impeller shaft.

The Kinetic Road Machine keeps the fluid chamber completely seperate from the roller’s drive shaft by seperating the two by a plate, coupled with 6 powerful magnets. The fluid is completely contained in it’s chamber making this resistance unit the best on the market IMO. The resistance unit is also guaranteed to not leak and warranted for 5 years vs. the 1 year that most other trainer companies warrantee their resistance units for.

I’m glad I took a look around at trainers first. I found a couple review sites where other people had gone through several trainers before they found the Kinetic. Several had experienced problems with leaking resistance units and the sealed chamber of the Road Machine was the reason they had choosen the KRM trainer.

I’ll probably be using it quite a bit this winter – course I’ll be outside on good weather days – hopefully snowboarding or snowshoeing.