About StudioCycles | StudioCycles.com

Who/What is StudioCycles

StudioCycles is a company like no other.

In this day and age anyone can say anything, without backup or merit, particularly in the wild-west atmosphere of the internet. Jeff Wimmer is the man behind StudioCycles. A former professional cyclist with over 20 years of mechanical experience in the bicycle and fitness equipment industry BEFORE Johnny G created “Spinning”. Jeff met Johnny G who created Spinning while managing Beverly Hills Bicycle Shop in 1993-94. Johnny used to come into the shop looking for odds and ends for this “special” exercise bike he was building. At the time Jeff didn’t think twice about Johnny’s rooting around for cranks, handlebars and other oddball stuff. Who knew the fitness industry was being re-written before Jeff’s very eyes.

After Johnny got his deal with Schwinn, Jeff became involved with Spinning, learning the peculiarities of this fixed gear bike. It was a quite natural transition, since Jeff had been building and repairing Schwinn Airdynes, XR-7’s, XR-8’s and DX-900’s for over 15 years, the VERY bikes that the Johnny G Spinners were modeled after. In the beginning of the indoor cycling revolution, Jeff began working with both Schwinn and Cycle Reebok, where he created checklists of necessary maintenance items to prolong the lifespan of the bikes, keep the riders safe and repair costs down and also became the tech support guy at Johnny’s World Spinning Headquarters where he developed a comprehensive maintenance program suited to the special needs of a fixed gear perimeter weighted flywheel bike known now as a Johnny G Spinner. The “Johnny G” portion of the name was later dropped after Johnny left the company.

Like anything that is mechanically involved and mass produced, there is certain lack of attention to detail AND fine tuning between manufacturing and the end user. Jeff recognized this immediately and started doing professional level builds, installs and repairs on these mass produced commercial indoor bikes. Facilities from all over the world inquired about this in-depth proactive approach to bike servicing. In 2001 Jeff took his professional bike building skills and field service knowledge and put it into a technical service manual for maintenance, service and repair. This was Volume 1 of what later became The Ultimate Tech Manual Series. These manuals are based on thousands of hours of mechanical experience in the field and in the shops he has started, opened and worked in. To date there are 6 volumes, including volume 4 which is specific to the Smart Release system found on Star Trac and Schwinn models, which are still manufactured to this day. Volume 5 established another bar with the creation of the “New Bike Set Up and Assembly Manual”. Most bike techs and installers do nothing more than screw a new bike together like an IKEA end table. No lubrication, tensioning, alignment. The usual suspects handling this responsibility are more concerned with how long it will take rather than if the job is done right.  Volume 5 was the Holy Grail for end users with no idea why their new bikes were literally falling apart, riding like meat grinders and riddled with out of order signs.

If there is any doubt about the credibility of Jeff’s experience consider this, there are over 50,000 manuals in print, the two top commercial indoor cycle producing companies not only sell these very manuals, but they also use them as reference points on their tech support phone lines. You can also find his manuals at Spinning.com, this is THE company that started it and owns it.

Be sure to check our original StudioCycles website, packed with tons of amazing bike information. Go to BikeTekUSA.org