Force USA C20 Installation - My Experience & Must-Have Tips

The Force USA C20 was not an easy build.

Buying it during the first week of the pre-order, there wasn’t any installation information online. I had to troubleshoot things I haven’t seen anyone mention. At times it was tiring and frustrating. And as a one-person team, I had to get creative with balancing things.

In the end, I was happy with how things turned out, but there’s a lot I wish I knew earlier. That’s why I took a lot of time to make this post.

Every step of the way, I’ll point out things to consider in early steps that can impact later steps.

Maybe after reading this you’ll have an easy install. Or at least a lot easier.

This goes 10x if you have a basement gym, or really any shorter ceiling. I have 91″until the bottom of my joists, the C20 is 88″ inches tall, and this tight fit required extra steps and strategy. (Of all the C20 review videos I’ve seen on YouTube, nobody has a short ceiling.)

Ready to get started? I’ll use bullet points and bold text to make it easy to scan.

Delivery

The delivery came from Utah. It made good time.
The main parts come in a giant container, with the stack weights in another small container.
Thankfully, the delivery driver wheeled this into the garage, as there was a chance for rain.
Taking all of the parts from the garage to the basement took over an hour.
Everything was well padded, and each bundle was numbered for it’s installation step.

Preparation

For better or worse, I organized all the numbered bundles in order, but did not open them and take inventory of the individual pieces. Since with some other products I’ve had the parts get separated from their numbers. YMMV.
This is the critical step… download the installation app. The printed manual is decent, but there were times when I absolutely needed the app to figure out what was going on. This goes double if you are getting older and your near vision isn’t what it used to be. You can zoom in a LOT and you can rotate the view in any direction. I’m an Android phone guy, but used an iPad to get a larger view.
If you have a small / crappy hammer, part 42 the “Selector Rod Connecting Pin” needs a lot of force to install. At one point I also needed to dislodge a partially inserted pin, so investing $30 on a heavy, large-head hammer was a lifesaver. The Spec Ops Tools Drilling Hammer, 3 lbs Sledge with Fiberglass Handle & Soft Mallet Face seemed about as fully-featured as you can get for the price.

Step 1 – Base Frame

At first glance, this seems too simple to mention. But this is a critical step in the planning phase, where you have a chance to dial in or second guess the exact location of your rack.

Set the telescoping low row section in the center of part 1 (Rear Connection Frame) as far back as it will go.
- This keeps you from having the rack too close to the wall, and inhibiting the full telescoping motion.
- Being too close to a wall could also make it awkward to remove plates from the angled weight horns.
My fully recessed telescoping low-row bar is 1″ from the wall. This works for me, but might not work for some people.
- The tradeoffs:
  - If you are too close to the wall, it will be inconvenient if not impossible to use the vertical barbell holder the back of the rack. Because there is very little room between your 45lb plates and the wall. I have more than one barbell, so I rely on another situation anyway. If you value the barbell holder, you might want to have 6″ or more between the back of the fully-recessed foot plate bar and the wall.
  - However, I ultimately had to position my rack close to the wall so my head wouldn’t hit any pipes while doing pull-ups. At this stage, I started 6″ from the wall. While you can try to account for pull-ups early on, when the pull-up bar gets installed later, I had to keep moved the rack closer to the wall inch by inch, re-testing the pull-up positioning every step of the way.

Step 2

This step lets you get a better idea how the rack lines up with the ceiling.

Step 3

The top / flat storage rack is in holes 19^th and 21^th from the bottom. (The back uprights are not numbered so you’ll need to count.)
The crossmember that goes below it is in the 12^th hole from the bottom.
- I saw a comment online about moving this up one hole, so you can store the spotter arms easier without conflicting with the low row footplate. This might not be a bad idea, because in order to store the spotters the low-row plate needs to be all the way back (and it is still a snug fit). Not sure if there would be any downsides.
Reminder to not over-tighten! The manual says to hand-tighten until the end. With my smooth skin, this does not always feel sufficient, so I try to tighten with the wrench to where some other people’s hand tightening might be. But this is a step where if you over-tighten (by hand or by tool), you may run into issues.

Step 4

Moving along…

Step 5

For people with tall ceilings, this will likely be uneventful.

The main consideration here is if you want to mount the handles on the inside or outside of the rack.
- My handles are on the inside, because…
  - As a taller lifter, I don’t want any chance of a barbell’s weight plates hitting them.
  - The trollers have a little “window” that lets you see the what hole number they are on. Being able to stand in one spot and quickly see the numbers for both sides helps to make sure they are even.

For people with short ceilings, this step is more work.

In my basement, the rack needs to be parallel to the joists. Then center of the rack, where my head goes for pull-ups, needs to be centered in the gap between the joists. However, since the joists are 16.5″ apart, this puts easy of the trolleys directly under joists.
This means that in order to install the trolleys, I needed to temporarily move the rack to one side, to the side posts are in the joist gaps. And when this is done, move the rack back where it was. This isn’t too bad, because the rack isn’t very heavy yet. (But you’ll want to make sure your hand-tightening isn’t too shaky for moving the rack.)

For most people, you are done.

However, after getting the first trolley on easy-peasy, I was in for a troubleshooting side-quest.

So… I put a trolley on. Cool. I go to put the other on, and it doesn’t slide down. I push a bit more, and a piece pops off from the top. Where did that come from? When the first trolly went on so easy, I didn’t bother to think about the internals. In the rare case this happens to you, here’s the lowdown.

There is a little part of the top plastic piece that apparently jutted inward by… maybe a millimeter or two too much? I couldn’t even tell that there was any obstruction with my naked eye.
I tried pushing this out of the way and putting the trolley back on but no luck. What finally worked was to keep pushing the piece out of the way while guiding the trolley on to the upright.

Did this lower my perception of the rack? Kind of the opposite.

I’d read comments about other popular functional trainer racks having excessive “slop” in the trolleys. Meanwhile, the C20 seems to have as little slop as physically practical. Granted, some FT racks have roller trolleys, and I can’t say how each of these methods will hold up in the long-term. All I can say is I have never had to stop and think about the trolleys when adjusting them, they just glide where I want them to go.

Image 1 – shows how a plastic part popped out at the top
Image 2 – my thumb is on the part that went ever so slightly inward, but needed to be pushed even with the rest of the unit.
Image 3 – you need to keep applying pressure to this part while you slide the trolley back over the upright.

Bingo. My trolleys work perfectly.

Step 6

Not a lot to say, other than some of these tasks a lot less fun as a one-person team.
- Even if you don’t want to bother someone like your partner to build the whole rack, borrowing them for a few minutes here and there can make a big difference.

Step 7

Straightforward.

Step 8

Now we’re cooking. After this step, you can try some pull-ups and dial in the placement of the rack. Since the weight stacks are not on yet, a reasonably strong person can still move the rack. Maybe not quickly, maybe an inch or two at a time, but it can work.

You’ll want to make sure the hardware fits in the holes before tightening. Some holes are a tight fit.

Step 9

IMO, this is where things get real.

The manual shows a wordless diagram, and you’ll need to make judgement calls on the best way to do this.

I’ll offer my experiences, but this is all unofficial. I might not be done everything in the easiest or optimal way.

Okay, let’s prep.

Get 100% settled on the rack’s location, because this is the point of no return, especially if you bought the upgraded weight stacks.
Get your good hammer.
Get some things to secure the weight stacks on each side while you’re working on them.
Get the app and zoom in and rotate around until you have a decent idea of where all the pieces go. (You are using the app, right?)

Now let’s look at what Page 59 (Troubleshooting) says about how this can go wrong with the weight stack. This won’t be relevant / testable until you have all the cables in place, but it’s worth foreshadowing so if you end up having the issue, you know there will be a solution.

“(If the) weight stack top plate and guide rod assembly is floating / not resting on the weight stack plate, the cable tension needs adjusting. There are 2 adjustment places. Either adjust the pulley that goes into the weight stack by screwing it in/out of the top plate, or by choosing a different bolt hole on the floating pulley (refer to step 7).”

Okay, back to step 9.

Step 10

It looks like there is a lot going on, but the basics are fairly straightforward after you get the cable through the trolley.

You don’t want to linger too long in-between the cable steps, and accidentally pull the cables that are holding part 47 (Rear Pulley Frame) which could fall off until they are secured in step 12

However, before we go, we should refer back to Page 59 (Troubleshooting) to see what can go wrong with the pulleys.

“(If) the cables are not smooth on one side or both sides, ensure cables are ONLY touching the pulley wheels. Be sure cable routing is correct so that it is not going over or under bolts or the frame. Ensure pulley wheels are not overtightened, and each wheel is able to move freely. Add lubrication to the bearings if necessary.”

The wording on the last part is interesting. I was mentally fatigued by this point, and didn’t read ahead to page 59 yet, so I yada yada’d this step and assumed the pulleys were good-to-go from get-go. But after a customer who previously owned high-end racks complained that issues with the cable tension were particular noticeable to him at low weights, I went down the rabbit hole of cable tension and lubrication.

The rabbit hole:

Cable systems will naturally have some change in resistance when you change direction due to friction, but high-end systems should generally minimize this compared to typical residential systems.
This can be influenced by the number and quality of pulleys, cable routing complexity, pulley diameter, cable quality and stiffness, and the weight you are using. (If friction is 3-5lb, that will feel different at 20lb than it will at 100lb.)
- A machine like the Force USA C20 has a lot of functionality, but that can also mean more complexity. Whereas at a commercial gym all of the different cable functionality happens on separate machines. And improving the tolerances to the n^th degree might require an entirely different class of parts… and cost… for a benefit that many people might not notice. While the C20 is relatively expensive for a residential machine, I’m not expecting it to match the friction-reduction capabilities of the “Call For Quote” machines.

That said, I still want to optimize the heck out of this! As you can tell by this post and my spreadsheets, I’m a perfectionist.

So I enlisted the help of Claude and the other AIs.

While you can’t always trust the first thing they tell you, if you ask several AIs in several ways, you may start to reach a consensus.

For pulley bearings – Super Lube Multi-Purpose Synthetic Grease w/ Syncolon (3 oz)
For cable contact points – Tri-Flow TF0021060 Superior Lubricant Drip Bottle (6 oz)
“Use small amounts, wipe any excess, and work the cables through full range motion after lubricating.”

Step 11

Not bad. If the top of Cable 50 doesn’t line up to the bottom hole on the back of the trolley, you can experiment with how much the other end of the cable screws into the base.

Step 12

It feels good to secure part 47 (Rear Pulley Frame) so it can’t cause any trouble.

Although do you remember the passage above from the troubleshooting page… ensure cables are only touching the pulley wheels?

Making this mistake would be obvious when guiding the pulleys through the top crossmembers. If the cables are scraping hard against metal you’ll have trouble moving them at any weight.

But the back of the rack is sneaky. Depending on where you stop twisting the Part 52 Cable that feed into the bottom of the Part 47 Rear Pulley Frame, the cables coming out of the top of the Part 47 Rear Pulley Frame could possible graze across the top-rear crossmember. So you might need to play with some quarter turns right or left until you maximize the distance between the cables and the crossmember.

Steps 13 to 17

Now for the Smith Machine.

As an aside…

I want to set expectations. When you’re done, this should feel amazing. Compared to other smiths I’ve owned and used, this is buttery smooth. It also has more travel (lower lows & higher highs) than most home gym smith machines… by a wide margin. This is one of the key reasons I’ve been loving the C20.

So if this doesn’t feel amazing, check that your parts arrived in good condition, you didn’t install a part the wrong way, etc… and if necessary contact customer support, which in my experience has been helpful.

Back to the install…

This was challenging! It took a long time! It a lot of swearing! And it was avoidable!

Do you remember when I was moving the rack around for things like the trolley install in the short basement. Apparently that left the width of the rack a bit narrower than it should have been. But since the rack is still hand-tightened, there is still some ability to wiggle the sides of the rack to the proper width for the smith machine. Yes, the cables stacks are heavy, but we’re likely only talking an inch or two.

One you have the right width, it goes fairly quickly, but it’s still challenging for a one-person team. Try to grab someone nearby to hold things steady while you insert the guide rods.

Other than that, just remember that the app is your friend, zooming may be necessary, and the arrows face the inside of the rack.

Step 18

Easy peasy. The logo goes right below the top crossmember, and the peg board goes right below that.

Step 19

The shroud with the C20 cutout is more visible if it’s on the right side of the right side

Step 20

The weight horns can go at whatever height you want.
Personally, I don’t like to hang 35lb plates and leave room at the top for 2.5lb and 5lb plates that actually get used.
- (Unloved 35s can do things like go on the bottom of weight sleds where they’ll never be touched again.)

Step 21

The j-cups and spotter arms aren’t typically something I’d think of as “installation” but these are different.
Maybe you will be a naturally who can glide these on and off effortlessly. I’m not that guy. I started out comically bad. I’ve got a bit better, but it isn’t second nature yet.
- What helps is to look at the side where the pin is visible, and using both hands to coax it through.

Force USA C20 Accessories

Some are not great, but some are legitimately cool, IMO. Better than you can say for a lot of bundles.
The highlights are the black aluminum bars.
- They don’t come crashing down on the high pulleys when there’s only the default 10lb plate.
- They also don’t hurt like heavier attachments do if you bump into them!