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I've put an order in on a new Wahoo Kickr v5 (2020) which I got on a good sale. I've bought a relatively inexpensive road bike (also on sale) to be (more or less) permanently mounted on the Kickr. The road bike, since it's inexpensive, only has 8 speeds on the cassette. I know the Kickr comes with a Shimano 11-speed cassette already installed.

I was told by the bike store that the 11-speed cassette won't work with the bike I bought, and that I need to install an 8-speed cassette. They said this will work fine (although of course it won't provide as fine a gradation of gear changes as the 11 speed). I just wanted to check that that was true -- that is, are there any issues I should be aware of when using the Kickr with an 8-speed cassette? Like calibration, or that the apps work correctly with the 8-speed cassette and 8-speed bike? I was wondering whether, having come with an 11-speed cassette, it was in some way "programmed" or "calibrated" for that cassette.

This is my first training wheel, and I'm ignorant of exactly how it works. Is all that the Kickr cares about how fast the axle is turning? That is, the bike is another world it doesn't care about, so you can use any cassette without concern?

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No problem, you just need to fit a 1.85mm spacer on the freehub before inserting the cassette (included in the box of the trainer, except for refurbished trainers).

For the rest, no calibration required, the trainer just applies some resistance and doesn't care about the actual gearing (like a wheel in fact).

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    Thanks -- does the 1.85mm spacer come with the Kickr or with the new cassette?
    – Cerulean
    Mar 3 at 0:35
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    @Cerulean it comes with the Kickr
    – Renaud
    Mar 3 at 6:48
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    The Spacer was included with my refurbished Kickr Core.
    – airace3
    Mar 3 at 8:51
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    @airace3 ah ok, it may have changed. With mine not, I wrote to the support (the wording on the website was not clear), but they sent one straight away.
    – Renaud
    Mar 3 at 8:55
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    The only cassettes that come with a spacer that I am aware of are Shimano 10-speed ROAD cassettes. They come with a 1.0 mm spacer because a their road 10-speed cassette is 1.0 mm narrower than their 8 and 9-speed cassettes (more gears but narrower, go figure?). The story on that goes deeper, but it is always good to know a couple things: 1) all spacers are not equal (1.85 mm vs. 1.0 mm), and 2) you will need that 1.0 mm spacer if you were using a Shimano road cassette (the exception to that is part of the deeper story, but I digress...).
    – Ted Hohl
    Mar 3 at 20:55

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