Resistance knob not working - Schwinn IC2 Indoor Cycling Bike

So to preface this, I am not a technician and I am not familiar with all of the technical terms. I am simply a home tinkerer whose schwinn IC2 bike tension stopped working after a year and a half. I was frustrated to find no solutions online so I decided to have a go at it myself (bike was broke either way, might as well try and fix it, right?)

I have identified the problem. I am going to try to explain this as clearly as possible.

The tension assembly is basically a round rod that fits into a square pipe. At the top of the rod is the red knob and at the bottom, it is nested against the brake assembly. So when you push the knob down, this pushes the brake against the flywheel (emergency stop). The mechanism to adjust tension works like this: Inside the square pipe, the rod is threaded on about the bottom 2 1/2 inches (with about a half inch unthreaded at the bottom). On this threaded portion, there is a square nut with a spring on top (the spring acts to allow you to push down for the emergency stop, but to hold it in the "on" position normally). As you turn the knob, and therefore the rod, the nut moves up and down the rod. So when you crank up the tension, it moves down, pushing against another round nut (this one you can see at the bottom), which pushes down on the brake. When you turn it back to let off the tension, the nut moves back up, and the tension is released. Got it?

So what seems to be the problem? The square nut inside is not catching on the rod. It will kind of move up and down, but it seems to be stripped enough that you can't get enough force to push down on the brake by turning the knob- it just slips and your are stuck with no tension.

After some tinkering (and a lot of frustration) I figured out how to get the rod out (which was actually quite easy in the end, of course). You have to remove the brake assembly by removing the two bolts that attach the whole thing to the frame. Then, you can just unscrew the round nut from the rod (using a wrench, while also holding the rod in place) and the turn the knob towards "+" until you can get the square nut off. Then the rod will slide out the top.

It was immediately clear... The rod is almost COMPLETELY STRIPPED. There is little to no threading left on about an inch of the threaded portion, rendering it useless. So the rod needs to be replaced.

Good news and bad news.

Bad news first. This part does not seem to be available anywhere online. Schwinn (hereby called Nautilus, their parent company) does not officially sell it online. And I'm guessing it is not profitable for anyone else to, either, because no one else seems to be selling it either.

Good news is that Nautilus will sell it over the phone. The part itself is $2.69 but with shipping, it came to about $13.00 (yeah... that's right. $10 to ship a metal rod because their quality sucks just because ********). The part was not covered under warranty. Maybe it would be within the first year? I don't know.

I didn't order it myself yet. I am heading to the hardware store tonight to see if I can rig up a custom fix because I don't appreciate having to pay to replace parts because their quality is lacking and they couldn't figure out how to make a threaded rod that wouldn't disintegrate. But that's just me.

If you want to order it from Nautilus the number I called was (800)605-3369 (listed on the schwinn website, it was different than that number in my user manual).

This was posted a while back, so you've probably replaced the bike or gotten rid of it by now. But I wanted to post this in case anyone else came across this question (like I did) so they don't have to be met with no solutions (like I was). I hope this helps someone!

Had three broken Ic2's in the back storage room of my gym.... Received a catalog in the mail that didn't have the parts i needed.. So I started googling and came across this post. Viola.. for 17 dollars with shipping all three bikes are going to be fixed. GREAT POST!