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After just purchasing a Lemond Revolution trainer, I noticed and realized as soon as I set it up that I would be loosing my rear wheel and its spoke attached speedometer magnet.

Are there any alternatives to buying the Lemond Power Pilot for Revolution? The Power Pilot at $439 USD its quite an expensive piece of hardware, costing nearly as much as the trainer did itself.

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An alternative to buying a Power Pilot may be to mount a cheap speedometer using the small magnet attached to the "wheel", then use the information here to calculate power for speed, print that out on a sheet of paper, and tape it to the wall next to your trainer. If you can afford a slightly nicer ANT+ capable speed sensor plus ANT+ USB dongle, you can then use the trainerroad application or Golden Cheetah to display speed and power on a computer screen. – R. Chung Nov 15 '12 at 0:29

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No it looks the Power Pilot is not your only option. It may be the case that any standard magnetic bicycle speedometer can be made to work with the Lemond Revolution trainer. The Lemond revolution does have an embebed magnetic sensor in it's flywheel. So all that is needed is a way to position and attach a speedometer sensor, so that it can read the magnet embedded in the flywheel.

Picture of the Magnet in the Lemond Revolution flywheel

My Experiment which resulted in a working and realistic reading from my low cost speedometer setup consisting of the following ingredients:

  • Bell Platinum Series, Bell Wireless Cyclocomputer

  • Four zip ties

  • Sturdy heavy gauge steel wire

  • Electrical tape (to wrap around the wire to protect the bicycles paint)

  • Pliers to bend and shape the wire such that the sensor lines up properly with the magnet.

enter image description here

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