http://eriks.co.uk/
(I wasn't able to find a listing for the belts themselves but they were able to get a hold of the belts I needed when I emailed.)
Please note: To fit the belts I've had to cut into the casing, but it is possible to avoid this.
What to ask for:
Poly V 230 J 3 (for the right hand belt, if your looking at the bike face-on)
Poly V 240 J 3 (for the left hand belt, if your looking at the bike face-on)
Assembly & user manual:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5pBrePbUv4fZzBoWUFYYWQ5TUE/view?usp=sharing&resourcekey=0-kx5kkhQT4uVCiec8o2giqw
A story
I decided to buy an exercise bike after an appalling experience at a gym, wanting to slim down for my yearly snow sports holiday. I purchased a Davina McCall Magnetic Bike, mostly because it was cheap, fold-able, and had really good reviews on the site I purchased it from. It's been well worth it.
However, I started to notice a 'klunking' in the pedalling. To me, it felt like I was cycling normally and then the pedals would spin faster for a moment, pedal normally again and then spin faster again, but it wasn't at every rotation of the pedals. I ignored it for a while but it became worse and worse and I recently decided to try and open up the bike to see if I could find out what the cause was.
The bike was cheap, but if I could repair it that'd be much cheaper than replacing it, especially as no other bike caught my attention in my latest search, missing the handy fold-able feature that the Davina Bike had.
Taking it apart was relatively easy, wherever there was a screw, I unscrewed, until I was able to wriggle the blue face-plate out.
There are two belts inside the bike. If you face the bike, so the handles are closest to you and the seat further away, the belt connecting two wheels on the left appears to be for the little computer to detect your progress. The belt connecting two wheels on the right appears to link to the magnetic resistance.
The left of these belts was clearly frayed but I couldn't tell if that was the problem. I slowly pedalled with my hands, watching the belt to see what happened to it when the pedals slipped and span fast again. At first I couldn't tell what was happening but, unable to see anything else that looked like it might be a problem, I continued pedalling and watching.
I eventually called in my fiancé and, while we don't agree on what the problem is, we do agree that replacing this belt was probably the way to go.
The right-hand belt was undamaged, so we could ready that it was a "ACRON S-Teknic 230 J" belt. Unfortunately a search online wasn't very helpful and the manual for the bike only listed the part very usefully as "57 Belt".
While we couldn't find a "ACRON S-Teknic 230 J" belt online I was able to start piecing information together about what this part actually was. "ACRON" was the manufacture, which was good to know because it meant if I could work out what the part was I could look for makes from other manufactures. I don't know what "S-Teknic" is, probably just some branding but the 230 J is interesting, you need to know a few other things too:
These belts are knowing as "Poly V" belts.
Poly: Just means many, Greek in origin I think.
V: This describes the shape of the belt, if you look at the underside you'll see this sort of shape vvv, the V is the shape, the poly bit just indicates that there's more than one. (Two vv s is still a Poly V belt, not a Poly W belt).
230: The first two digits is the length in full inches of the belt. The number always has a zero on the end for some reason, I think it's an indicator of how much of a full inch extra there is but I haven't seen any belt listings with any number other than zero online. (The left hand belt actually snapped while we were testing the problem so, while we could read 230 on the non-damaged belt, we were able to measure properly the one that needed replacing anyway - 240).
J: This is an indicator of the dimensions of each v, height, length and width, you can look up the specifics if you want but you don't need to, just know that it's a J.
3: I mentioned that the underside of the belt looks like three v s next to each other, this is what the 3 stands for, the number of vs.
Phew! So, I finally knew what I was after and my fiancé and I did a small tour of local washing machine, vacuum, lawn mower and motor parts suppliers to see if they had any. No luck, and finding somewhere that clearly sold Poly V 240 J 3 belts online wasn't easy either as at that time I was still piecing together information about what I needed.
There were a lot of sites that only catered for mass industrial orders and the site I actually approached informed me they wouldn't deliver to the UK. (If anyone's interested the original site was http://www.motionindustries.com).
When I contacted this company though, they gave me an email contact for the website at the top of this post. Their own website doesn't list the parts, but a friendly and helpful man responded to my online enquiry and after a quick phone call, arranged the order of a replacement Poly V 240 J 3 belt. There was a minimum order value though, so I also ordered the other belt, Poly V 230 J 3, and a Poly V 250 J 3. Just in case I'd measured wrong.
They're due for delivery this week and I'm looking forward to getting the bike fixed up and running again for 1/10th of the price it would have been to replace.
As a quick internet search wasn't all I needed, I thought I'd post about my exercise bike fixing adventure in case anyone else found it useful and save them the long weekend it took me to figure all this out - not that long really. :P
I decided to buy an exercise bike after an appalling experience at a gym, wanting to slim down for my yearly snow sports holiday. I purchased a Davina McCall Magnetic Bike, mostly because it was cheap, fold-able, and had really good reviews on the site I purchased it from. It's been well worth it.
However, I started to notice a 'klunking' in the pedalling. To me, it felt like I was cycling normally and then the pedals would spin faster for a moment, pedal normally again and then spin faster again, but it wasn't at every rotation of the pedals. I ignored it for a while but it became worse and worse and I recently decided to try and open up the bike to see if I could find out what the cause was.
The bike was cheap, but if I could repair it that'd be much cheaper than replacing it, especially as no other bike caught my attention in my latest search, missing the handy fold-able feature that the Davina Bike had.
Taking it apart was relatively easy, wherever there was a screw, I unscrewed, until I was able to wriggle the blue face-plate out.
There are two belts inside the bike. If you face the bike, so the handles are closest to you and the seat further away, the belt connecting two wheels on the left appears to be for the little computer to detect your progress. The belt connecting two wheels on the right appears to link to the magnetic resistance.
The left of these belts was clearly frayed but I couldn't tell if that was the problem. I slowly pedalled with my hands, watching the belt to see what happened to it when the pedals slipped and span fast again. At first I couldn't tell what was happening but, unable to see anything else that looked like it might be a problem, I continued pedalling and watching.
I eventually called in my fiancé and, while we don't agree on what the problem is, we do agree that replacing this belt was probably the way to go.
The right-hand belt was undamaged, so we could ready that it was a "ACRON S-Teknic 230 J" belt. Unfortunately a search online wasn't very helpful and the manual for the bike only listed the part very usefully as "57 Belt".
While we couldn't find a "ACRON S-Teknic 230 J" belt online I was able to start piecing information together about what this part actually was. "ACRON" was the manufacture, which was good to know because it meant if I could work out what the part was I could look for makes from other manufactures. I don't know what "S-Teknic" is, probably just some branding but the 230 J is interesting, you need to know a few other things too:
These belts are knowing as "Poly V" belts.
Poly: Just means many, Greek in origin I think.
V: This describes the shape of the belt, if you look at the underside you'll see this sort of shape vvv, the V is the shape, the poly bit just indicates that there's more than one. (Two vv s is still a Poly V belt, not a Poly W belt).
230: The first two digits is the length in full inches of the belt. The number always has a zero on the end for some reason, I think it's an indicator of how much of a full inch extra there is but I haven't seen any belt listings with any number other than zero online. (The left hand belt actually snapped while we were testing the problem so, while we could read 230 on the non-damaged belt, we were able to measure properly the one that needed replacing anyway - 240).
J: This is an indicator of the dimensions of each v, height, length and width, you can look up the specifics if you want but you don't need to, just know that it's a J.
3: I mentioned that the underside of the belt looks like three v s next to each other, this is what the 3 stands for, the number of vs.
Phew! So, I finally knew what I was after and my fiancé and I did a small tour of local washing machine, vacuum, lawn mower and motor parts suppliers to see if they had any. No luck, and finding somewhere that clearly sold Poly V 240 J 3 belts online wasn't easy either as at that time I was still piecing together information about what I needed.
There were a lot of sites that only catered for mass industrial orders and the site I actually approached informed me they wouldn't deliver to the UK. (If anyone's interested the original site was http://www.motionindustries.com).
When I contacted this company though, they gave me an email contact for the website at the top of this post. Their own website doesn't list the parts, but a friendly and helpful man responded to my online enquiry and after a quick phone call, arranged the order of a replacement Poly V 240 J 3 belt. There was a minimum order value though, so I also ordered the other belt, Poly V 230 J 3, and a Poly V 250 J 3. Just in case I'd measured wrong.
They're due for delivery this week and I'm looking forward to getting the bike fixed up and running again for 1/10th of the price it would have been to replace.
As a quick internet search wasn't all I needed, I thought I'd post about my exercise bike fixing adventure in case anyone else found it useful and save them the long weekend it took me to figure all this out - not that long really. :P
Poly V 230 J 3
This is what the right, Poly V 230 J 3, belt looks like. The belt should fit in the teeth on the wheels in these positions.
Poly V 240 J 3
This is the left, Poly V 240 J 3. Again, it should fit in the teeth on the wheels in these positions.
Magnets
Here's a picture of what the magnets look like. We moved mine while working on the belts, and you can see that the spring has been over stretched, to get the original level 4 resistance I now have to use level 5. This spring is used to increase or decrease the effect the magnets have on the resistance. If you're still having trouble, see if there is something you can do to the positioning of the magnets.
