CycleOps Fluid 2 Indoor Bicycle Trainer

So my fluid trainer is a couple of years old now. For the first couple of "off-seasons", I really enjoyed it. But it slowly grew noisier. Finally, just a couple of days ago, I burned out the chrome cylinder that the rear wheel rides on. Come to find out, that I know of one other person that had this identical problem! Like I said, mine is a couple of years old (so was my friend's) so maybe the problem has been identified. Another friend has one that is less than a year old but he's gonna sell it to me cause he never uses it...hopefully it lasts longer than mine did! For the time that it worked, my trainer was really great...just expect more that a couple years from a trainer that cost me $300.
Good luck!

I actually ordered this trainer, but then I found a road bike review comparing trainers. I discovered that the 1up trainer was far superior, being quiet, durable, road-realistic and having three resistance settings instead of just one. So back went the Cycleops and in came the 1up trainer. I'm quite happy.

Have tried this out several time since I put it together. It is a little louder than I thought it might be but it is still very quiet compared to the other types of trainers (magnetic, air). The mating of the bike and trainer is easy and everything works great.

I never owned a bicycle trainer before, so I don't have anything to compare it to. My only complaint about it is it's louder than I would have liked. It seems very well built, looks great, and can fold away in a closet when you want it out of site.

I used to do a lot of road riding 20 years ago, so now I'm not really "in shape" for returning to road riding. I got this trainer when I bought a new road bike since I used to use an old fan based trainer, the fan was very noisy! I didn't like the idea of the mag trainer having a resistance selector via cable or having to get off the bike to adjust. The fluid trainers adjust resistance based on how fast the rear wheel spins... faster spin, more resistance... this makes it perfect for the training videos that are available... they say you should shift up or down and the resistance will then be easier or harder. Actually, most of the training videos I've seen use fluid based trainers (either cycelops or kinetic) anyway.

I do my exercise at night, usually when my family has gone to sleep. I wouldn't call the trainer very quite, but it's certainly not loud. I can be downstairs and the family asleep upstairs and it doesn't disturb them... even with the bedroom right above where I'm riding. I don't need to turn the TV volume up much to hear the audio.

This is a well build and sturdy trainer. It's not light, most of the weight is in the fluid and flywheel assembly, but the tube frame is very strong and looks well designed. It was very easy to assemble, it took about 5 minutes to figure out and put together. The hardest part was setting how much pressure to apply with the metal roller to the tire so it wouldn't slip when I sprinted and wasn't pressing too hard to cause the tire to heat up/wear faster.

I've done about 100 miles in the past week on it (got it last Sat!) and am looking forward to more.

BTW, it also works with mountain bikes, but the knobby tires are a lot louder than the slicks on my road bike, but I didn't buy it with plans to use my mountain bike since the gearing is so much lower for hill climbing, I don't think the resistance from the fluid would be enough for a hard workout since it wouldn't be turning as fast as a higher geared road bike (53:12 on the road bike verses 44:11 on the MTB)