At the moment, I have my Specalized Crossroads set up on a Kinetic Road Machine Fluid Smart Trainer I bought a few months ago. So far I really like it and using Zwift but I think I am ready for the next step. I am thinking of buying a Wahoo Kickr and building my own setup. I want to use my Crossroads for outdoor riding. So I don’t want to tie it up on the trainer. I am thinking of just finding or buying a frame, a front wheel and installing an aftermarket crank front sprockets, handlebars, front and rear derailers. I don’t need a carbon lightweight frame or brakes or anything fancy because obviously it won’t be going anywhere. Probably want good quality crank, pedals, shifters, and derailers though. But I’m not sure.
Where would be a good place to find that kind of stuff? Has anybody else here built a bike just purely for indoor training that never is used for anything else? If so got any tips on what to do? I’ve never built a bicycle before. Done tons of wrenching on cars and motorcycles but bikes is new for me.
I haven’t built for the indoor trainer, but rather kept and modified for it. I use a mid-80’s Specialized that was born in a 7-sp, downshifter Shimano 105 setup; I upgraded it to brifters before it landed on the trainer, and to 10-sp when my trainer’s relatively high power floor made it difficult to do recoveries. So - it’s a 30+ year old road bike with 10sp cassette, and a fit similar (not identical) to my regular roadie. You could probably buy something similar for really cheap. For this application, it’s a lot simpler to find a used bike than to build one up. There are lots of Craiglist equivalent these days (kijiji is common in Canada), I’d start there.
I actually just ordered a cheap bike off Amazon for this same purpose after looking on Craigslist and seeing how expensive used bikes are now. Didn’t go with Eurobike as it wasn’t the right size for me, but found something else around that price point.