SaferProducts incident

Failure type

Fire / ignition

Incident narrative

SaferProducts.gov consumer incident report 20210908-4E1D3-2147360606. Severity: Incident, No Injury. Product: LifeFitness X3 (LifeFitness We purchased this as a new elliptical (though it appears it was manufactured about 2 years before we bought it). It has been used exclusively for home use, and sat idle for about 5 years before COVID. Over the past year, it has been used 3-4 times a week for an hour at a time until the aforementioned issue. Model X3). Incident: I returned from a week of vacation (the unit had been sitting idle for about 8 days), and decided to elliptical for a quick workout. I turned the unit on, and the welcome screen flashed on, and then flashed off. I hit the 'resume' button, hoping that it had just frozen out, and it flashed again, but quickly turned blank. At that point, I thought I smelled an electrical fire, and inspected the base of the unit, by the engine & power cord. I didn't notice any issues, and then looked back to the top of the unit. At this point, visible smoke was coming out of the middle console of the unit (below the screen, in between the stationary handle bars). I quickly unplugged the unit, and the smoke persisted for about a minute. At this point, it still had not stopped, so I squirted some water into the holes where the smoke was emanating from. This caused the smoke to stop, and then I stayed with the unplugged unit for the next hour to ensure that it didn't start smoking again.