Body Solid EXM3000 gym assembly ep1

This is why I made the videos and these articles. The quality of this gym is magnificent. It reminds me of the Preccor machines I use at the AnyTime Fitness that I was going to. With the pandemic raging, especially here in Florida, I felt it would be better to just spend the big bucks to get a really good home gym. There are Smith Machine types, that have a barbell constrained by two vertical linear rails, but I wanted something more like the machines I was already using at the commercial gym.

This gym has three stations (places to sit), four if you count a floor station where you can do rows and back exercises. What really sold me was the squat station. This is what substitutes for the barbell in a Smith Machine. I did not want to deal with free weights, and this is the only machine I saw that had pretty much every exercise I do at the commercial gym.

I do 12 different exercises there, and I am confident I can accommodate those. Best yet, I can add a few exercises to when I would have been driving to and from the gym.
 

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The gym arrived a day late, but the shipper had a tracking website, and called me Friday to schedule the pickup Monday. The problem was the 1200-pound pallet had broken apart between Dayton Ohio and Tampa Florida.

The small heavy boxes were loose on top, and a long box was busted open, exposing the rails.

There were seven small heavy boxes for the two weight stacks used in the machine.

There were two medium boxes, two short boxes and a large square box. All were beat up.

The heavy long box had the structural elements cable-tied together. There is no rhyme or reason to what goes in each box, you should just unpack everything, inspecting for damage.

The second long box has the four covers for the weight stacks. They were not bent or damaged.

This medium-length box has most of the frame for the squat station.

Here is the squat station out of the box. Note the tread plate is in another box.

There is a short box full of seats and backs.

The other short box is full of heavy stuff.

The heavy short box has the squat tread plate, the top weight stack bracket and other parts.

The big square box has the overhead pull- downs, three small boxes and other parts.

One small box is all pulleys, the other has plastic rubber and other small parts.

The third small box has all the bolts.

The bolts are just tossed into two bags.

Be sure to lay out the bolts so you can see all the different lengths. These are 1/2-inch bolts.

The 3/8" bolts also come in slight length differences.
 

When you get everything unpacked, you can print out the instructions from a pdf you get off the internet. The tall box has instructions, but they print them double-sided so you can't lay everything out to try and make sense of the drawings. There are no written instructions, just a bill-of-material and a bunch of drawings that can be hard to follow.

The first assembly diagram is page 6. It helps to look up the bolt reference IDs on that page on page 1 and just jot the bolt lengths down directly on page 6 and following. There are bolts that are only 1/4-inch different, so note the tape measure I used to verify I had the right length bolt. Once you get started, it's not so bad.