Body Solid Rubber Grip Olympic Weights Odor

[DaJokerz]

Hello,

I have received a good bit of equipment over the last couple weeks as I am starting out with building my home gym, and will write a more formal review after I put them through some workouts.

I wanted to write about the 355lb BS rubber weights I ordered. They look and feel great, but the odor that these things generate is off the charts.

I've washed them twice, and they have been sitting outside since Friday afternoon. They still our producing quite a hefty smell.

I cant even bring them inside because it was giving me a head ache and it was filling up the entire house. I read the other threads about people saying they had an odor, but this is nothing like I imagined. I was thinking how bad can it be? It is ROUGH.

Someone suggested using Vinegar on them, but I haven't tried it yet.

Just FYI. I will have some other things on the Iron Masters, the Super Bench, two bars, muscle clamps, and the fitness gear power cage after I put some time on them.

-Jason

[HILMAN76]

I'm in the same boat, i washed them in warm water and dish soap, dried them and they still reak!

I have them out on the balcony now, its been three days and they still smell horrible out there. Hopefully by Friday they stink way less than they do today!

[HILMAN76]

Two weeks outside now, they still smell pretty bad! I might have to wash them again and let them sit outside again. Faaaaaaawwwwwwwkkkkkkkk!

[one.lifter]

They smell like new tire smell to me (which I like)...good news is this smell will go away over time (it took about a year)

[AttyGuy]

Tape 'em up. No one will think you are strange for doing so either. . .

[morebarbell]

Told ya so.

The Body Solid plates that they sell locally fill up the entire store with their smell. The only rubber plates that I've seen... er uh... smelled.. that didn't have any bad odor were from Ivanko. Though some of their older Chinese made rubber plates smelled bad. Now the rubber coating is made in the USA with virgin rubber.

The smell is one of the reasons that I prefer painted iron plates. And with painted iron plates, you can repaint if necessary but there's not much you can do if/when the rubber starts to fall apart.

I don't know if cleaning the plates with detergents will get rid of the smell, but you may want to be careful that they don't dry out or otherwise damage the rubber coating. I've never tried it but Ivanko recommends SP-80 cleaner and conditioner for their plates. IIRC they said that Armor All products dried out the rubber coating.
http://ivankobarbell.com/products/sp80/
Just something to keep in mind. You don't want your plates to end up looking like this:



The photo is from a web search (I'm not taking credit for this one)