Mini Exercise Bike Pedal Exerciser Resistance Cycle Indoor

First and foremost, this pedal exerciser is currently doing what it was bought for, where a more expensive electric one didn’t. My elderly mother had a stroke, and now back at home, community physiotherapy for her can best be described as patchy. So she wanted a pedal exerciser. First I got her an electric powered one from a mobility specialist, thinking the power assistance would help. It didn’t. My mother couldn’t keep her feet in the pedals as the electric exerciser went round, even on its lowest speed.

So that one was returned, and I ordered this cheaper one from Amazon, that has no power. I wasn’t necessarily expecting it to be a success, but three days into my mother using it, as I write this review, despite her disability she can make the pedals go round for a few minutes, on a low resistance setting. Which pleases me. However, unlike the electric pedal exerciser, I had some assembly issues with this one that I wanted to highlight. You may find identical pedal exercisers on sale from different sellers, that look the same but have a different brand name. I would think my comments apply to all. Of course, my example of pedal exerciser MIGHT have had issues that others don’t, but I have read other reviews where assembly issues were found.

So, first job upon unpacking, apart from checking everything was there, was to fit the feet. One short foot, that goes near your chair when you pedal, and one long foot that goes furthest away from you. You get some chrome dome head hex key screws (more about those later), some plain washers and two oval plates with holes in. You also get a cheap hex key and a cheap tin spanner. The short and long feet screw into the underneath of the pedal exerciser, into threaded holes drilled in a metal box section. The long foot was pretty easy. A plain washer goes under the head of a chrome screw, then you put the screw through a hole in the oval plate and then through a hole in the foot, and screw it into the box section metal under the exerciser. Do the same with a second screw, and tighten both screws with the hex key. The oval plate spreads the load from the screw heads to stop the plastic foot from breaking under pressure. All good.

When it came to the short foot, I had a problem. The plastic moulded short foot touched the bottom of the exerciser’s plastic moulded casing, before it touched the metal box section underneath. It left a gap underneath. If I’d have fitted the screws, washers and plates and tightened up the short foot just as it was, I’d have likely broken some plastic as the screws pulled the foot closer to the metal, and either cracked the foot or the exerciser’s casing, or both. So – having got tools and screws and washers in my shed, I got some extra plain washers, and used both my own washers, as well as the rest of them that came with the exerciser, to ‘pack out’ the gap between the foot and the box section metal, so when I tightened the screws threaded into the box section metal, to hold the short foot, the screws were clamping down on my extra washers and not stressing the plastic mouldings. Problem averted. The exerciser either had a design issue here, or maybe poor quality control, but with extra washers it was an easy fix, but it’s something to be aware of.

Problem number two came with fitting the pedals. With the more expensive electric machine I’d had no issues. With the machine I’m reviewing here, I had trouble getting the pedal threads started in the pedal crank. The pedal marked ‘R’ goes on the right side as you look as the machine with the LCD clock facing you, and is a clockwise thread. The pedal marked ‘L’ goes on the left and is an anticlockwise thread. For a while, I thought I was getting it wrong, as the threads would not start, but ‘L’ is left and ‘R’ is right, that is correct. EVENTUALLY I managed to start the right pedal thread clockwise and started screwing it in with the tin spanner. And BOY WAS IT TIGHT TO TURN! I got maybe a third of the way in with the tin spanner, and had to keep backing out and going forwards again to make progress. Like tapping a hole with taps and dies. I did 32 years as a maintenance and fabrication engineer, and this pedal exerciser GAVE ME PROBLEMS! Eventually I HAD to go and get a 15mm AF drop forged chrome spanner out of my toolbox or I wouldn’t have been able to screw the right hand pedal in. It was really difficult. When a little bit of the thread emerged through the pedal crank as the pedal screwed fully home, the tops of the threads were shiny and polished (see photo) which means the pedal thread was too big for the threaded hole in the crank. I think maybe when the pedal crank was manufactured, the holes for the pedals were tapped with the threads before the crank was chrome plated, so the thickness of the chrome plate reduced the size of the hole. Fortunately, the left hand pedal was relatively easier to screw in, although it was still a bit tight and I still used my own better spanner, not the ‘tin’ one.

Having got past the assembly issues, As I reported earlier, this cheaper machine is doing a better job for my disabled mother than the more expensive electric one did. I’ve got no idea about the longevity of this machine, but my mother is unlikely to work it hard anyway. If you look for and find different black or silver pedal exercisers, with different names on them, that look a lot like this one, it’s likely the same one. If it’s what you were looking for and the price is right, buy it, but look for how things fit together when you assemble it, and improvise rather than risk breaking the plastic.

One final thing – well two actually – the exerciser came out of the box with four chromed domed screws screwed into the threaded holes underneath the machine, and four chromed domed screws in a bag with all the washers and oval plates. The instruction book says there should be eight domed screws. You only need four – two for each foot. ????! Also, neatly coiled up and held with a rubber band, and sealed into a small resealable polythene bag, was a woven strap with a plastic buckle. NOWHERE in the instruction book is this strap mentioned and there is nowhere for it to go on the machine! VERY STRANGE.