I know I'm late to the party, but am looking to set up a Wahoo Kickr / Tacx Neo with Zwift. Current mtb is an orange clockwork 120 which is 1x10. Firstly, do I need a road bike for the turbo, or would a gravel bike work?
Cheers!
Anything that fits and works will be fine.
I use my MTB because that's all I've got. I do tend to spin out on any descents though, which makes the freehub scream. If you stick to climbs or flat rides then that isn't a problem.
Anything will do but you’ll find yourself wanting high gears (as in road bike high).
Clockwork will be fine, and double fine if a larger chainring can be fitted than whatever you have now (some modern mountain bikes are tight around the chainring clearance, clockwork is prob fine).
You only really need big gears if you intend to race and even then you don't need anything massive. At the other end zwift has a virtual gearing setting (called trainer difficulty) which means you don't need really light gears either.
Direct drive (where you remove the rear wheel) makes it easy. I'd suggest you run whatever bike setup you ride outside as you keep the same position in "training".
As above you might find MTB gears a bit low. Even with a compact road setup I find myself in the smallest rear sprockets most of the time.
As my turbo is in a spare room I ended up with a dedicated bike on it. Less faff with cleaning and setting up my outdoor bike.
You don't need much in the way of spec as it's an easy life on a trainer. Just a case of matching positions.
Depends what you do, if you do workouts which use ERG mode to set the resistance an MTB will be absolutely fine (unless you are super fit and have an FTP of >300 perhaps) in fact I started with my Pompino and that was fine too, if you want to race you'll probably find the gearing a bit too low (I did).
In the end I watched eBay for a month until I managed to grab an a 5 year old but as new Boardman Sport for £200, which has been perfect.
I use my old Kona HT 26" hardtail on a wheels off trainer running 1x9 gearing. I even pinched the forks off it for another bike so it has some hybrid rigid steel v brake things in there holding the front end off the floor. Works just as well for doing what it has to do as an expensive road bike I reckon.
I'm using my wife's old hybrid, a bike I'd hate to ride in real life but it's ok on Zwift. Extra long seatpost, and I did fit a spare road chainset (compact) mostly because the Q factor on the original cranks was huge, the original BB axle was way too long.
Good luck finding a smart trainer at a good price currently tho😉
As said, concentrate on getting the trainer first. Then sort the bike. Availability of both are likely to be poor if not now then very soon.
Oh, garmin are now handling the CS side of Tacx too... just saying.
Looks like a batch of https://www.halfords.com/cycling/turbo-trainers/smart-turbo-trainers/elite-novo-smart-turbo-trainer-461874.html are expected in the next week.