Question

Bret - First off, great website. Keep up the good work…

My question for you is whether you know of any source for user manuals or brochures for old (now discontinued) cardio equipment. I'm specifically looking for user manuals for the Precor, Life Cycle and Stair Master cardio machines available around 1990.

Surprisingly, none of the manufacturers are of any help, and the used equipment suppliers I've contacted don't have any material for such old equipment.

Do you know of any "museum" that might have such info, or if there is an exercise equipment archive somewhere that I might contact? Any input you could offer would be greatly appreciated, and sorry for the odd request.

Answer

You'd think that with the vast sea of information online it would be easy to track down a manual for just about anything made in the past 50 years, but sadly that's not the case for exercise equipment like treadmills, exercise bikes, ellipticals and home gyms.

Your best bet to find a manual typically resides with the manufacturer, but there's no guarantee they'll have one unless they're totally anal about keeping records which 99% are not.

To try and help answer your question I just spent the last hour reaching deep into my online search bag-o-tricks and came up empty handed with no solid leads. I did come across a couple of "manual" websites but they were nothing more than spam traps pasted with ads for things like viagra and diet pills (a lot of help that is).

Sorry to say but you've stumped me on this one. If I come across a resource for old exercise equipment manuals I'll post it here on the blog.

Anyone else care to chime in on this one?…