Minoura Japan – FAQ (Basic)

Varies depends on your purpose, circumstance and budget
The best trainer model varies depends on your training location, circumstance, purpose and bike type. Trainer is not almighty and each model has its own benefit and weak point. It's important to choose the model by considering your desired training contents and the trainer's performance.

For example, using rollers by a beginner should be dangerous, and using MTB with knobby tire on a tire drive trainer must be terribly noisy and it will have to disturb your neighbor's peaceful life. And using the strongest trainer by a beginner whose muscles are not so strong yet will cause serious damage to your body, and perhaps you will become exhausted to the indoor training.
In general, we recommend you to start with M60-D; the weakest performance tire drive trainer. And as per building up muscles gradually, you can grade up the model.

Anyway, we strongly recommend you to ask to your local bike shop or well skilled riders to assist for choosing the "Best" model for yourself.

Advantages are quietness and natural resistance, disadvantage is wearing your tire
The advantages on tire drive trainer are;
1) Natural pedal feel
2) Stronger resistance
3) Basically quieter than others

Tire drive trainer drives the rear wheel at the outer edge of the tire directly via the roller, so the pedal feel becomes better because you use the wheel size maximumly. And the combination of rubber tire and alloy roller is good for avoiding slippage, so it allows to increase the flywheel weight then it can increase the total resistance power.
In addition, tire drive trainer has less number of moving parts and the tire works as a cushion to absorb the vibration, so this system can maximumly reduce the noise.

Tire drive trainer must wear down the tire, and it cannot be avoided due to its mechanism.
However, if you correctly adjust the compression level of the roller to the tire, it could be expected to keep in the same level you use the bike on the actual road.

Advantage is no wear the tire, disadvantages are slippage and louder noise
Rim drive trainer system doesn't touch the tire at all, so the biggest advantage on this system is "No tire wear". We can say you can use rim drive trainer on a wheel without tire!
This feature allows you to mount an MTB with knobby tire without replacing the tire or the whole rear wheel for expecting smooth training.
And in case of using with a road bike, you don't need to worry about the tire even on the warming up before race.

The disadvantages on rim drive are;
1) Temporally slippage and jerky pedal feel because the roller drives the slippery rim side wall, especially at the time of strong pedaling
2) Narrower adjustability of resistance control due to its magnet mechanism

In addition, rim drive uses a belt to transfer the rotation from wheel to Mag unit and it occurs belt driving noise, so it's generally a little noisier than tire drive model.

Advantage is enabling real feel training, disadvantage is unstable for the beginners
Rollers is the oldest style of indoor bike trainer rather than stationary bike trainer.
On rollers, you ride bike on freely spinning 3 rollers, so you will not be supported anything and you must maintain the balance by yourself. The bike stands by itself due to its wheel's gyro moment.
Therefore, rollers is not easy and it requires you some innate talent such as well maintaining the balance.

Advantages on rollers are;
1) The most natural and fun riding feel
2) Less tire wear because rollers doesn't apply any artificial brake
3) You can concentrate on training because you must maintain the balance whenever you ride on rollers.

Disadvantage is the difficulty to ride, especially on beginners, but it can be solved by having an assistant beside you or using rollers just next to a wall.
In addition, the noise level is a little louder than tire drive trainer.

Stationary trainer is good for building up muscles. Rollers is good for improving your total riding skill
The stationary trainer including tire drive and rim drive holds the rear wheel stiffly, so you can ride at any style without any special technique then you can focus on building muscles or increasing your cardiopulmonary function.
Also tire drive trainer is sometimes used for checking the riding form, because it allows you to remove both legs from the ground.
However, stationary trainer completely holds the bike, so you may have bad habit such as just pushing down the pedal (not rotating) or sitting in wrong position (not in the center of the saddle).

Rollers is the best device to learn proper riding technique such as correct sitting point, correct applying weight, no load to handlebar, and smoother pedal rotation including pilling leg technique.
The steering character will be changed to a quick one once you ride on rollers. You won't be able to ride smoothly if you don't maintain your balance perfectly. This unstableness occurs because one or more of above points are wrong. In other words, if you can ride on rollers smoothly, you can ride on the actual road at maximum performance without any waste.

At this moment, it's the latest GYRO series
We understand quietness & less vibration is the most important point for those who live in an apartment house. It's also true even on an independent house to make your family happy with your indoor training.
We have been focusing on this point for many years, and it's our unique point from any other trainer manufacturers.

Those companies are focusing only on the resistance power or flywheel weight, and they don't care about the quietness which every trainer owner all over the world really wish.
Their "Quietness" means if you can hear the noise from 50 meters away from your home. But what we are aiming is the "real" quietness to much closer location such as next room or your below neighbor. They don't care how seriously people are worrying about the noise from trainer.

The quietest and less vibration model is the latest GYRO series.
GYRO is originally designed to have the widest resistance range and the finest pedal feel as well as the quietest model ever.

VFS series was developed to be "the quietest trainer in the world". VFS's performance is now a little bit behind GYRO but it is still in excellent level most people can be satisfied.

Rollers must have a tubular roller drums so the noise level must be louder than trainers. The main reason for the noise is the continuously hitting the tire tread to the drum surface.
We put a styrofoam insulator in each drum to reduce the noise level on Action Magroller and Advance.

A convenient device to remove and install wheel quickly
Standard bike wheel is installed on the fork with a plain hex nut (called as "Hub Nut"), but on most sport bikes, wheel equips with a special device named "Quick release skewer" to enable to remove/install from/to the bike in mere seconds. By operating the side cam lever, it can tighten and release the wheel very quickly.

Here are the basic cautions on using quick release skewer. For more information, refer the guide book or ask to your local bike shop.

1. Do not try to rotate the cam lever to tighten the skewer like as an extension lever of nut.
2. (Especially on the front wheel) Do not lean the wheel and insert the axle to the deepest position of the fork cut-out.
3. Adjust the opposite side nut to be that you start feeling resistance when the lever comes on the same line to the axle.
4. Fully push inward the lever with the power that the lever leaves stain on your palm. Too less resistance means you don't tighten the skewer enough, and you need to release the skewer and adjust the nut precisely.

The resistance control device from the handlebar
Some of our trainers equip a remote shifter. It allows you to adjust the resistance level without getting of the bike, and it is usually installed on the handlebar or stem.
Turn the lever toward L mark, the resistance level will be decreased. Turn the lever toward H mark, the resistance level will be increased.

The non-remote model has a small lever on its resistance unit (except VFS non-remote version) to adjust the resistance level manually, but you should not operate it while using trainer. You can also adjust the resistance by shifting the bike's transmission gear.
However, using bike's gear instead of shifter device may cause jerky pedal feel because too wide gear ratio will occur too big torque difference.
We think you should use the same gear ratio you usually use on road even while getting on trainer in order for expecting more natural riding feel. We strongly recommend to have the remote shifter.

No, we don't do any coach individually
To expect safe and efficient training, we suggest you to ask to a professional sports trainer or medical doctor to get the best training program exactly you need.
We are the hardware manufacturer and we don't offer any software support to individual users.

For getting professional advice how to use trainer more efficiently, we strongly recommend you to purchase the trainer at a professional bike shop rather than just buying at internet retailer or auction.

Order at your local sport bike shop
We don't sell any product to the consumer directly. It must be through a shop.
We are sorry we don't have any detailed information about the shops in each country. Please contact our distributor to get the necessary info. Distributors can be found in the following link.

Minoura worldwide distributor list

Basically 1 year on the resistance unit and 5 years on the frame
Please refer the "Warranty Service" column in the Support page by clicking the following icon.
Minoura Limited Warranty Policy