Turn Your Power Rack into a Smith Machine! Bolt Fitness Stinger Smith Attachment Review

Introduction

Over the last year we are seeing more and more companies come out with rack mounted or rack attached versions of smith machines, and the one we are reviewing today is even compatible with racks from different brands. This is the Bolt Fitness Stinger Smith Machine Attachment, which a quote “universal” attachment to any 3x3 rack with 1 inch holes and hardware. This is attachment is actually intended to be an add on extension to your current rack since it includes not only the dedicated smith bar, and guide rods, but also a pair of 91 inch uprights, a top and bottom set of cross compatible crossmembers, a multigrip pull up bar, leg press plate, and even bar safety catches. But as with all of the smith machine attachment options, there are differences both in functionality and the nuances associated with making it fit on your specific rack. So let’s check it out.

Hey guys this is Michael with The Jungle Gym Reviews, today we are reviewing the Bolt Fitness Stinger Smith Machine Attachment which to my knowledge Bolt Fitness supply has actually offered for a while compared to some of the newer versions from Bells of Steel, Get RX, or smith machine alternatives like Bulletproof VTS or similar. That being said, I think there are some limitations this has compared to the newer options so I am going to break it down for you as far as how well it works, compatibility, dimensions, and all the things associated to determine if this is a good option for you.

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What is this attachment?

So this attachment is of course made to fit the Bolt Fitness rack ecosystem, they call the Storm Series, which again is the industry standard 3x3 uprights with 1 inch holes and 2 inch hole spacing throughout the rack. Bolt Fitness has a lot of creative and unique offerings with their ecosystem and I have reviewed some of their other options in the past like the plate loaded lateral raise they call the Gemini Peregrine lateral raise and chest fly rack attachment. They also adjustable have lever arms, chest supported row pads, single stack cable columns, all types of dip bars, pull up bars, storage, and more that you can add or build onto a 3x3 rack. And like their other attachments, they also made this Stinger supply smith machine attachment to be able to be used with other racks outside of just the Bolt Fitness ones, which we will talk about in a few minutes.

The Price

Now first thing I wanted to cover the price and what is included. The price of this attachment is about $1100, $1095 to be exact, BUT the kicker is that they unfortunately do charge a separate shipping fee unless you are local to them or can pick it up from their Houston warehouse, which you can always do for free. For me, I live pretty far away from Texas here in Michigan so that shipping cost is $500, which is an additional half the price of the attachment already. The reason the shipping cost is so expensive is because of what they include in this attachment, because it’s not just a bar and guide rods: there are two 91 inch 3x3 uprights included, four 24 inch 3x3 crossmembers, of course the two smith guide rods, the smith bar with rotating bearing sleeves, the height selector that attaches to the uprights, a leg press plate, and various other hardware. So this attachment, is really much more than an attachment its uprights plus crossmemebers which is what allows you easily to add to your existing rack and turn your 4 post into a 6 or 6 into an 8 post, etc. Now this attachment didn’t natively fit on my existing 6 post Titan Fitness Tiran series rack, and we will talk about why, so what I did was take two uprights, attach them to this attachment, to create essentially a standalone 4 post rack with smith machine built it, hence the difference in upright heights.

Rack Compatibility

Speaking to the rack compatability there are 2 main things you need to check on your racks to make sure it would work on your rack: The overall rack width, the overall rack height. For the width this rack is only compatabile with 43 inch interior width racks, this would be Bolt Fitness racks obviously, but then racks like Bells of Steel Manticore and Rogue Monster racks. My Titan Titan Fitness Titan series rack is a 42 inch interior width rack and I tried my best and due diligence to make it fit, which I thought I could, and in the end I was unsuccessful because of the included smith bar has a built in specific width for its latching and locking mechanism which will not align with the height selector on anything more or less than a 43 inch width rack, so renders the bar and system useless. So then a REP PR5000 or other 41 inch width racks also clearly will not work then either, you must have a 43 inch interior width rack/49 inch exterior width rack for this to work.

The rack height is a little more forgiving thanks to some good foresight in engineering by bolt where they made the crossmembers have adjustable holes slots, meaning they can fit both metric and imperial bolt spacing, and can therefore be adjusted in height up or down slightly to fit your rack, providing your rack is at least 91 inches tall or taller, otherwise the smith guide rods will be too tall for use in your rack, since they get bolted into the top and bottom crossmembers.

There is a third option if you want to get creative, which is you could disregard the included crossmembers and uprights entirely, and just use the smith machine components in your existing rack. You still need to use a 43 inch width rack, again due the fact you have to use their included smith bar which dictates the fact this has to be a 43 inch width rack only. But you could use shorter crossmembers and drop in the top and bottom guide rod mounting plates. However the other stipulation is that the bolt spacing for these mounting plates are only compatible with metric 3x3 racks. I could go into a lot of detail on what this means but I think only a specific subset of people would be buying this AND not using the included uprights and attachments, so just know you need a metric upright and hole spacing 3x3 rack if you plan to ONLY use the smith bar, guide rods, mounting hardware, and rack height selector themselves and not the supplied Bolt Fitness uprights and crossmembers.

Orientation on the rack

So you can orientate this smith attachment whichever way you could like front or back. Per this product photo I technically have it backwards meaning that they show it on the back of the rack and I mounted it to the front and for me that was really just dependent on making sure J cups and barbell movements would work on the front, which they do provided the smith bar is stored in the highest position out of the way. I also do this because if you put it on the back you need to push it away from a wall or something in order to get a bench underneath it or give you enough wall clearance during certain movements. You can also put the pull up bar they included anywhere you want on the front to back depth of the crossmember, I just happened to orient it directly above the smith bar all the way at the front. Once again, Bolt advertises this to be used on the back uprights so you can still have the front upright clear and free for everything else, but you definitely can save space or add this as part of a 4 post or standalone rack like I have here, ou just have to be careful of which J cups you use and where you store the smith bar.

Dimensions

So the product page for this attachment is a bit light on the information so I want to give you the dimensions that you would need to decide it this will fit in your rack. The overall dimensions are height at 91 inches which is to the top of the included upright, the width as mentioned 43 inch interior rack width which is the same as 49 inch exterior rack width, but that doesn’t include the length of the permanent smith bar which is 85 inces long. The included crossmembers are 24 inches deep plus the included front uprights, so this will add 27 total inches of depth to your existing rack. But you can get smaller uprights like the 16 inch rep PR 5000 ones I personally like to use, so you can cut down another 8 inches off of this attachment if you want to use in a more compact space. Some of the other various dimensions are the loadable length of the smith bar being 15.75 inches, and oh by the way did I mention these have bearings and rotate? The lowest height of the bar till you hit the bump stops on the guide rods is 15 inches, so if you want to deadlift or do something with a typical barbell free weight range of motion you need to get some blocks or a step to make up the height difference. The height selector options are 5.5 inches apart. The highest you can move the bar, like in a standing military press for example is 81 inches till you hit the top of the guide rods which is just a few inches shy of full lockout for someone like me at 6ft2 but enough to still where I can get the majority of the movement completed. The pull up bar also adds a few inches to the overall rack height but you can choose not to mount it, or even mount it upside but by default it makes the original 91 inch height of the rack actually extend to 95 inches. For those who want to thing about retrofitting specific parts to their rack: The smith guide rods are 7.5 inches from the uprights with the height selector. The bottom smith guide rod plate takes up 5 holes at the equivalent slightly less than ~8inches apart metric and the top plate take up 3 holes at the equivalent ~4 inches apart. The smith bar itself weighs about 55 pounds and the bar diameter is 30mm with shallow and passive knurling. If there are any other dimensions I missed or you are particularly interested in knowing, definitely drop a comment down below.

How well does it work?

So now that you know all the details about what this attachment is, for a vertical path smith machine, it does work exactly as intended. Since it’s has a dedicated rack attached height selector/latching and unlatching mechanism, feels intuitive to use just like all the smith machines you are used to at a commercial gym. The bar itself feels ok and I don’t mind the passive knurling because it is just a smith bar, which again typical although commercial offerings are usually slightly wider bar diameter closer to ~32 mm from many of the manufactures I have seen in the past. The smith trolleys and guide rods have linear bearings so they are very smooth and again the guide rods are mounted on a vertical axis, so it only moves straight up or down and not on an angle like you might see from other manufactures. For what I used this for, which is mainly supplemental or accessory compound lifts, like bench pressing, shoulder pressing, squatting, bent over rows, upright rows, etc. this thing has been a great add on and I have always enjoyed using smith machines in my training, because being able to have a fixed and repeatable bar path just helped with some isolation and allows you to take some of the balance and stability out of certain movements as desired. Even though this is a smith attachment and not a dedicated smith machine, it feels about 90% the same in my opinion, with the exception of not having a counterweight which helps offset the weight of the barbell and essentially makes the bar itself easier to lift which can be more accommodating to all strength levels, but I haven’t had any issues with the 55LB weight of this bar here even for things like those upright rows. On that same note, since the bar is heavy enough and the tolerance are tight enough, it doesn’t ever get crooked so that it distributes the weight fairly even on both sides, although I will say to check the level of your floor and rack because if your floor is sloped one side will feel heavier during the movement. I noticed where I originally had this rack, one side felt about about 5-10 pounds heavier, and noticeably enough to where I had to adjust my grip to compensate, so just know it does seem sensitive to that, which logically makes sense due to gravity, friction, weight distribution, and all that fun physics stuff.

Limitations

Now some of the things I don’t like about this smith attachment first off is the included leg press plate. Although it attaches easily to the smith bar with included detent pins so you can do vertical leg press, I just don’t think it works well or would consider this a reason to but this attachment over others - it just doesn’t work well logistically on here. The angles seem wrong and I still can’t quite work out in my head if its just a limitation of trying to attach a plate to an existing smith machine or how they designed it here specifically based on the attachment holes on the bar, but in the end it just feels off. You essentially have to keep your heels higher than your toes, which is opposite way you would want to naturally leg press, and if you don’t keel the plate pitched slightly backward towards your torso, then the safety catches hit the bar on the way up and down which can at minimum be annoying or possibly be dangerous if it someone causes you to miss a rack or drop the bar without intending to. The other thing I mentioned previously about needing to add a step or similar because the bar doesn’t go low enough natively is not really Bolt’s fault, but is just due to limitations of such a rack attachment needing lower crossmembers to attach to, so it can’t physically go lower than those, so I can’t really fault them there.

Other Options

As far as other options go, there are and will continue to be more and more popping up from other manufacturers but honestly they are all different so as of now I think the market is still pretty wide open because the smith machines attachments are all different and peoples need are different. There are Different smith attachment heights, fitting different rack widths, with different mounting styles, and different levels of compatibility and modularity. To date, the main competitors to this would be the new GetRx Tornado smith attachment which I will have a review on in the next few months and this one fits 42 inch width racks like GetRx or Titan. The Bells of Steel smith attachment fits 41 and 43 inch racks depending on how your orient it with the spacers, which you can see in action from a recent review from Glucks Gym, and I have a few other options coming in for review over the next few months including the SMAI Vanta smith machine insert which will also fit different size rack widths and even holes sizes, and the Maxum XST smith machine attachment trolley which is similar to the Bulletproof VTS which is a trolley system on each upright that you can connect with a bar to use together or separate to individually with one arm. All of these have their own pros and cons matrix of price, rack compatibility, footprint, and smith functionality that I will go over further in those respective videos.

Overall

So overall while I think this smith machine is good, and it’s definitely a decent option if you have a 43 inch width rack that is over 91 inches tall. However, I think with the advent of new innovation and design in this rapidly growing rack-mounted-smith-machine-attachment-space I think there are going to continue to be better functioning and cheaper options considering space and functionality. As with a lot of home gym pieces though, its not a quite apples to apples consideration, if you like a vertical smith path and already have a 43 inch rack, and even if you live close to Bolt in Houston and can avoid paying a steep shipping cost, I would definitely consider this as an option over the Bells of Steel version since it’s not too much more excluding shipping. But with shipping, for almost double the price of the Bells of Steel version, even though you get a little more range of motion, because the Bells of steel is only 72 inches tall, it might be tough to say this smith attachment is worth almost double that Bells of Steel price. Since this attachment has been around longer than some of the other versions, I think if Bolt Fitness did an update or a V2, or offered an option that was cheaper that didn’t include the uprights, it would be a strong competitor in the smith attachment space, especially for 43 inche racks.

Signoff and Q&A

So guys that’s it for this review for the Bolt Fitness Stinger Smith Machine Attachment review. As always, if you have any questions, please comment down below and I will be happy to answer or at least try. Thank you for tuning into The Jungle Gym Reviews, we will see you next time, take it easy, peace.