Assault Bike

[iamsmuts]

After watching Craigslist for a few months looking for an Airdyne, I got an Assault Bike for $750 during one of Rogue's flash Black Friday sales (as a birthday present from my wife). This was a 25% discount.

Camelcamelcamel says that Amazon sold it for the same price several months ago for a single day. These sales will probably happen again, but it's hard to say when. And they don't last long. Rogue ran two batches of roughly 50. They both sold out in about 15 minutes. . . .

I've only had it for two days at this point. I'll post some observations after I get more time on the bike, but I'll note my initial thoughts here. They might have another sale, some people might be interested in buying one of these pricey air bikes, and many of the reviews online look to be far from objective.

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SHIPPING

Rogue shipped it in two days. It went UPS freight. It only took two days, but I had to schedule a delay with UPS. You need to be home with it arrives. The driver is contracted to simply put it in your driveway.

Rogue put it on a pallet. This added 50 pounds to the shipping weight. The box only ways 110 pounds.

It's not that hard to carry the box. There are two handles cut into the cardboard on alternate sides. You can see one on the left here:



And here is the hole on the other side:



My Emotiva wanted to go for a ride:



It's all nicely packed up in Styrofoam:



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FYI

There are a few other airdyne threads. Here are some:

http://startingstrength.com/resource...tricyle-4.html

http://startingstrength.com/resource...bike-hiit.html

http://startingstrength.com/resource...1-airdyne.html

http://startingstrength.com/resource...r-airdyne.html

[John Hanley]

Dude, Emotiva. Cool. I love that company.

[iamsmuts]

Dude, Emotiva. Cool. I love that company.

This is their cheapest product. I can't afford the good stuff. Just got it a couple days ago. It's a nice little amp. It too was on sale. Usually it's $220, but it was and might still be priced at $150. I had to buy it. For now I put it on kitchen duty. It's driving a new set of Wave Crest HVL's nicely. I love these speakers! Again, I'm in budget audiophile seating with no funds for a ticket in first class. . . .

[iamsmuts]

The Assault Air Bike is very easy to assemble. But the instruction manual is confusing. You are probably better off just figuring it out yourself. They have a video where a guy with a black wedding ring (which is something I haven't seen before, but am strangely fond of) puts it together before your very eyes. It's helpful:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BHlCcd7NB8

They give you a bag of shitty tools. For laughs I tried putting it together using just these. They pretty much get it done. But you need a 10mm and and 15mm wrench to adjust the chain. An adjustable wrench will work, but the space is tight. You should have dedicated wrenches.

Also, the maintenance video says that you need Locktight 262 and a torque wrench.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Gi7qSORmwc

I assembled it in 20 to 30 minutes.

[John Hanley]

'

[Mahendra]

Congrats on the bike. I bought one in the beginning of July for $1,000 CAD. Which was about $780 USD at the time. Regular price too. Surprised I saw it for 1,000 USD on Rogues website for so long when it's been 1,000 CAD the whole time.

Had the same issue... Couldn't find an Airdyne on Craigslist here and after a few weeks I pulled the trigger.

It's a love hate relationship... But I'm sure you'll love it... Er hate it...

[iamsmuts]

Almost everything on the bike feels very sturdy. It's heavy and very stable. It has slightly adjustable feet, but I just left it as is.

The footprint is smaller than I expected. Here it is next to the C2:





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THE SEAT

The seat is uncomfortable. It's irritating after just a minute. I'm going to try to adjust it a bit more, but the nose keeps trying to insert itself into my taint.

The seat also feels a little too far forward. I'm 6'2". I have the height on 6 out of 7 or 8. And I have the seat all the way back.



With the seat all the way back, my inner thighs threaten to rub on the front part of the horizontal section attached to the vertical post. This is a minor issue. I'll probably be able to just adjust the seat to my liking. If not, I'll try a new seat.

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THE MONITOR

I have the PM5 monitor on my C2 Rower. I thought it was primitive until I got the Assault Bike (AB). The biggest problem with the AB monitor is that it isn't back lit. I can barely see it in my basement. I'm probably going to have to get a book light. (I think the previous version of the C2 monitors weren't back lit either.) For a grand, this thing should have a brighter display. I guess it wouldn't be problem in a brighter room.

The AB monitor is better than those I've seen on Airdynes, but there isn't much to it. You can setup a custom interval, time, or distance. The custom time button is a little irritating. It starts immediately. No count down. The interval button gives you a count down. If you are going for an all out 60 seconds, you'll lose a second pressing the button.

One section of the monitor cycles between total time and seconds remaining. This is confusing and disheartening when you are pushing hard. (It doesn't do this on custom intervals, just custom time.) There's probably a way to stop this from happening. The manual said to press the right button, but there isn't a right button. (I'll read it again. . . .)



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Those are my only complaints right now. It's a very nice bike. Would an old AD4 suffice? Yes. Will the AB last 30 years? Probably, but we'll have to see. I'll post more after I've been using it regularly.

Two other things:

The bike kicks up a lot of dusk and blows it right in your face. They sell a $40 wind guard. I'm going to try vacuuming my basement (when I get a vacuum). The chalk dust is very hard to sweep up and very easy for the bike to blow. The spots in some of the pictures are dusk.

I'm used to having the distinction between stroke rate and split time on the rower. With the bike you have watts and calories, but it all comes down to RPM. Training will have to be rpm based. The difficulty and calorie numbers rise exponentially with the the rpm. It looks like you can get about 1 calorie a second at 90-95 rpm. At 80 you get about half that. I'll get better estimates later.

[iamsmuts]

Cool. I've had some pricey audio shit, but finding awesome engineering in a value product is so much more fun.

I have a little NAD D3020 driving Elac B6 speakers. The combo sounds better than many systems I've heard that cost many, many thousands of dollars.

That's a nice combo!

For her birthday, I setup my wife's office. I got her a Chinese dac and a t-amp, both by SMSL. They are far better than I expected. With those Wave Crest speakers and a cheap Dayton 10" sub, it sounds beautiful. We just sit in there are listen. The problem is that everything else in the house sounds awful in comparison. Hence the upgrades. . . .

[iamsmuts]

Are you planning on doing a long term review?

Sort of. I guess. I'll post if there are any problems. And I'll post some thoughts in a week or so after I've been using it more. Right now, if I had to choose between the rower and the bike, I'd go with the rower. But having both will be nice.

I'm mainly posting here because there's so much hype on this thing I was very suspicious. For instance, one of the glowing reviews on Amazon seems fake. The reviewer says that they didn't like the rower because it didn't work their legs. WTF! The rower is 80% legs. And the AB doesn't involve your hamstrings much at all or your glutes as much as the rower. The bike almost pure quads. Either the reviewer had never been on a rower, didn't know how to row, or was lying. I don't know which. But this kind of thing smells funny. I also don't trust paid endorsements by crossfitters. . . .

So, I guess I'll write a long term review, if only for my own amusement and procrastination needs. There's a lot of stuff I should be doing right now.

[iamsmuts]

Also, for the wind/dust guard, I'd see if you can jury rig a bike fender to it. I have the cheap airdyne. I never paid attention to anything other than going balls to the wall each interval, and counting the "fuck you" seconds until I had to go again.

Is the seat/saddle adjustable with pitch? Check underneath. I'd recommend setting the saddle height even with your hip or slightly lower for starting out. For bikes, ideally the bottom of the pedal stroke (6 o'clock, foot horizontal, ball of the foot over the spindle) should produce about a 30 degree angle for your knee.

And finally, are there no straps for the pedals? If the pedals are 9/16" I'd recommend getting pedals you can attach straps to.

Thanks for the tips. The pitch is adjustable. I'll angle it even further down. I tried a couple positions already.

I'll try lowering the seat too, or at least getting it right. Perhaps it's too high.

There are no straps. I have some bike parts I can experiment with. They sell pedals with clips, but I don't have shoes like that.