Fun With Treadmills (Part II)

Fun With Treadmills (Part II)

I asked the person from whom I bought the 29 minute wonder treadmill when they bought it, because ProForm has an eight year warranty on the motors. He offered to refund my money, and try and get ProForm to repair it. Very nice! And nicer than I was expecting.

Maybe, now that I have torn the old treadmill down as far as I have, I'll see if replacing the belt myself is simple enough to do. At least this one has a working motor.

UPDATE: Before charging into the unknown territory of changing the walking belt on the old treadmill, I reinstalled the motor, and verified that it still worked. (Yes.) So I decided that I had nothing to lose on this, I tried to get the walking belt off.

Complicating the matter is that the walking belt goes around not only the two rollers, but also the walking board, which is the solid surface that bears your weight on the treadmill. Short of using a Mobius walking belt, this means the walking board has to come off the frame to get the walking belt off. There were no obvious bolts or screws on the top or sides, so I removed the bottom cover, held in by several zillion sheet metal screws.

To get the bottom cover off, I had to remove the legs that provide a limited range of tilt. These were held in by pretty massive socket head screws held by some astonishing tight lock nuts. A surprising piece of cleverness is that each screw went through a metal sleeve in the leg, making a bearing. Just a screw against bare metal would have worked fine, but this was a nice touch.

From the bottom...still no sign of the screws holding the walking board in place. Could it be glued in place? I tried prying it--and then I could the tell tale sign of a screw thread from the side.

The fascia on the sides of the walking board were loose at the edges, so i pried them off with a screwdriver, and found that they were held to the walking board by staples! I resent anything that can be repaired that is fastened with one use fasteners; it's reminiscent of a 1967 Pontiac we had where the radiator hose clamp was intended for a single use: when the car was assembled.

Once those were off, four screws on each side held the ground board to the frame. I had to unscrew a couple of locating bolts for the front and rear rollers, but now I have the belt off, and I have a local supplier of new walking belts here in Boise. And I have confidence that I will be able to install the replacement and get it working again in quite a bit less time than it took to take it apart--unlike a friend of mine who disassembled his Pinto engine one New Years Eve while nine sheets to the wind--and could not remember the next morning how it all came apart.