Body Solid G6B – Home Gym with Smooth Glide Bearing System
Given that I wasn’t familiar with Body Solid I was a little hesitant to purchase this item, on top of that ordering gym equipment of this size made me even more nervous. My experience was very good with this purchase so I would like to share. I decided to purchase the G6B product because it supported many exercises without taking up a lot of room. To plan how much room you’ll need I recommend going to the Body Solid website and using their room planer, it allows you to plop down items of various sizes to determine how much room you’ll have to work with. The equipment comes fairly well packed, they use tie wraps to hold items in place and space the parts out using foam. Some of the parts are wrapped in plastic either to prevent damage from scratches or the metal is pre-lubricated so the plastic prevents a mess. If I remember correctly it arrived in five boxes along with the small boxes holding the weights. Before you assemble it make sure you have a big open space to put all the pieces, it’ll take up a lot of room so I would pick a spot that will be near where you will assemble the equipment. If you are going to assemble the item in a small room then I would put the parts into a different room since you won’t have move to move around. The instructions come with a page with a bolt measuring figure, make sure you use that otherwise you’ll be putting this equipment together wrong. Pay close attention to the diagrams, especially the directions showing what order the bolts and washers go on, there are a few spots where if you get this backwards metal will hit metal. Also make sure you check the updated instructions at the end of the manual, when I put the plugs at the end of a few bars it was only until I looked at the supplement material at the end that I realized I used the wrong part. Quite a few items are labelled with coloured stickers, make sure you have all the colours matching on one side, the parts with the red sticker go on the left side (if you view it from the front). I recommend assembling it with someone helping you out. I’m no stick figure (210lbs) and it took me around 8-9 hours to put this together by myself. If you are much smaller than me then you may run the risk of hurting yourself so get some help putting it together, the last thing you want is to have it fully assembled then not be able to use it 🙂 My only cons are that some of the bench press metal pieces were scratched, but they provide you with touch-up paint to mask this (unfortunately the touch-up pain doesn’t exactly match the original colour). This was no biggie since all the scratches were on the back side of the metal so unless you get behind the machine you wouldn’t see them. Some of the instructions can be a little confusion, I’m one of those people that usually doesn’t bother to read instructions but in this case they are very necessary and like others have said there are a few confusing spots due to mistakes. The Body Solid logo on the weight stack keeps popping off, seems like the logo sticker is just applied and not bent with heat to make sure it doesn’t flatten out over time. These are very minor things, I’m just listing them so that others are aware of them. Make sure to purchase silicon spray, you’ll need to keep the bars that the weights travel up and down lubed. I use Permatex silicon lubricant on the bars and had to start applying it around a week after putting the product together. I recommend spraying it into a cloth and wiping the weight bars with it, the first time I did this I tried to spray it directly holding a papertowel behind it and made a bit of a mess. One surprise to me was the price of this product on Amazon. I was expecting the minimal amount of weights to come with the product given the price was around $1000 lower than the MSRP. The extra weights came with the item which add an additional 50lbs (maybe 60lbs … I forget). I don’t know if this is due to me purchasing the item through FitnessEdgeOnline or if they all come like this on Amazon. Very well built solid home Gym. I’ve owned cheap exercise equipment in the past and they are a waste of money. Good basic documentation with exercise routine recommendations. It will take you a while to assemble. Took me about 8 hours by myself, if you can get someone to help that will speed up the process. Direction are good with a few minor discrepancies. I also was missing a couple minor parts, cosmetic mostly, still waiting for replacements. Purchased through home fitness. Very cooperative bunch about scheduling delivery around my schedule. Overall this is a very nice piece of exercise equipment. The motions are smooth the components are quality. The manual does include examples of exercises that are capable on the machine and there is a video included that does show some various techniques but not on the G6B which is a bit disappointing. Most exercises you can figure out how to reference them to this machine but in my opinion this should be specific to the equipment for the $2K price. The advertisements state “over 50 exercises” though these are not shown anywhere and even calling Body Solid directly they could not identify what these were or how to perform them. Really, not that big of a deal but still not complete in my opinion. The equipment is delivered in 6 boxes in a semi trailer. Some of the boxes are 80 pounds or so and are fairly big so help is required to move them into the final room (no, the driver won’t help). Assembly is time consuming but the directions for the most part do a good job of showing views of the before and after for the “step”. It took my wife and I around 7 hours total beginning to end. The manual also has a few errors. Check in the back of the manual, there are a couple of pages with no page numbers that identify some updates with a few pictures. Look here first to save yourself some time and irritation looking for parts that no longer are being used. Some other errors: Page 16, step “A”, it states to install the “convex end caps…” then to “tighten allen screws…”. Once you insert the end caps you can no longer access the screws so tighten the screws, then install the end caps or you’ll have to pry the caps out to get to the screws again. Page 21 does not correctly show the nut and washers required in the “reverse side drawing”. There is a clarification drawing in the phantom back pages. Page 22, step “D”, the “plastic roller end caps” do not exist. They replaced them with a metal cap and large plastic disks, pics on the extra pages in back. Page 34, step “B”, the washers are item #78, not #74 as stated. Also, the single stirrup handle is really a requirement but not included. I found this on Amazon for about $15 and got it the next day but if it is shown in advertisements, in the manual and is referenced in exercises it really should be included. Also, the “spring clips” that attach the different bars have razor sharp edges so be careful. I sanded them down a bit after nicking my fingers a few times before figuring out what was causing this. I bought about a half a dozen more clips from the orange box store with another 6″ of chain to make our routines a bit easier (don’t have to change chains/bars quite as often for different exercises and the extra clips make for easier connect/disconnects). The warranty is lifetime with no exceptions, even on normal wear parts so keep your receipt. Lastly, we purchased from LDA Fitness. They followed up very well on a missing part and were incredibly attentive. If they are ever a possible vendor on a future purchase, I would pay more to use them. Their customer service is unmatched in my opinion. If you do have a missing part you’ll need to contact Body Solid directly as apparently the vendor can no longer get missing parts. Overall, we’re very pleased. So far (about 1 month) we’ve created routines of about a dozen exercises and are working out a good flow. Routine takes around 45 minutes. Highly recommended, quality product. ===Update=== Two months later and still liking the G6B. Had one issue start popping up and that was the weight pull from any position started to “chatter” or stick a bit throughout the motion. Very annoying and made it difficult to do a full stroke. After looking through the manual it mentioned lubricating the weight rods so I used silicone spray and wiped them down. Problem solved, very smooth again… Other than that no problems yet…Body Focus
Exercises
Reviews of Body Solid G6B
Review 1: Well worth the money
Review 2: Body-Solid G6B Home Gym
Review 3: Solid, well built. Does the job…
