What’s the best Pedal System for Road Cycling? – BikeFitTuesdays
Welcome to today’s video welcome to the first
video back in the UK after our trip to Vietnam I’m here with James we’re in Beaufort’s studio
because we’re doing a brand new series of bikes for Tuesday it’s been so long yeah a long time since we’re
gonna revisit some of the old material we’re gonna put a new spin on it we’re gonna give you guys
some more information on how I’m gonna bring some whole new list of topics and I’m going to
start debunking a few myths that we’ve we’ve come across everything in the industry over the years
so without further ado, we’re going talk about pedals only why can we get a big drop of pedals
over there what we’ve got here is a selection of the most common systems that we find in the
studio and I guess we’re gonna go through and explain the differences in the benefits certain to
have some of the pitfalls of abusing some of the systems I guess if we kick it off with the guys
that invented it looks like it’s a French manufacturer that makes several clipless pedals this is
the gear to match which actually in my opinion is my favorite look this tends to be the
the pedal that I’d sell to people who are lighter riders smaller women it’s the easiest thing to
engage it’s not quite heavily real weighted so that tends to make it easier for you to come along
and actually, clip into the thing and engage with it a little bit better that’s fundamentally it
this is the original pedal system the original clipless pedal system which comes with three
different options of floats this is one of the older versions they’ve more recently moved
to a carbon leaf spring the benefits are the least appearance is lighter it lacks any form of
adjustment to the resistance so if you don’t fit they offer several different levels of tension but
if you don’t like factory-set tension there isn’t any way of deviating from it without
removing the leaf spring and replacing it with a different one there are titanium axle versions
both of them along with a series of steel or stainless steel carbon and plastic bodies next is
the time I took recently Maverick has bought the rights to this system so the Machpelah
is the same system as this time were the very first manufacturer to develop a float
in pills back in the day when Look developed their sister system they were using a fixed cleat and
that caused quite a lot of problems for riders but we’ll do a video these are quite
popular with a lot of riders because it’s quite an easy system to get in and out of there is however
one fundamental flaw with them they have very little they’ve got virtually no adjustment
for starts, so you can’t move the paperclip medium athlete they are just pretty that pretty much
set you can reverse them to alter the stance but it isn’t sufficient adjustment in
my opinion versus the other systems that were before seen today as a bike fitter I find it one
of the harder systems to work with it is easier to use from a consumers perspective but frankly
it’s easy to use on an almost immeasurable scale versus the other systems I had to use these for
a while and get me to if you ever have a chance to try on someone’s shoe that’s the right size
and clip-in if you haven’t tried one of these I think you should because it’s the weirdest float
yeah from a pedal system, I’ve ever used pivots in two different ways I’m weird I can’t even
explain it so if you ever have the chance try Mark we then move on to my favorite system I
spent many years running looks I started on Shimano I moved to but moved to looks
because I started riding campout on my bike and new car you can’t have that photo of Ronnie Shimano
pedals on I can’t think of it and I recently moved back to Shimano just before our trip to
America I go back to Shimano and frankly wonder why I’ve been doing my life SPB SL without a
doubt the most stable system by a long long way it’s a solid pedal it’s more it’s the most durable
system’s also probably the most common system that you’ll see the power I have in my hand here
is one of five say carbon-fiber bodies with chrono the axles of decent seal bearings they start the
off by for tips on the knowledge panel, I’ve got to say the entry-level pedal from Shimano the
Suites don’t fit the pedal very well so they tend to have this notion of washing around
or excessive flow so if you’re gonna buy from on a pedal and my recommendation would be to
start at least for the r550 there’s only about 10 pounds more maybe I can be as little as five
pounds more than they are 540 when you buy them online moving up from there you go to
105 Integra and dura-ace fundamentally the engagement system is all the same leaves
the same pleats again you’ve got three different options of please complete float so the blue
clean offers two and a half the yellow cleat which offers six degrees of what you tend to get the
pallets packaged in and they also offer the work of the devil red meat which is a fixed fix float
doesn’t allow any movement of one of a variety of this system that is worth noting is the
SP d SL e which is only available in all Tegra dura-ace versions iterations but this is a long
an axial version of the standard pedal system now it’s worth noting that the juror race as actually
is that just like a shorter axle than the other four pedals so the Jura race the long axle pedal is
still narrower than the Altai prolong axle pedal but if you have an individual that
has a typical varies bowlegged bigger riders obese riders tend to benefit from the system
this is the single best-selling pedal that I saw here four out of five petals that I sell
of this long axle Shimano system moving on to war is perhaps one of my least favorite systems and
that’s not going to be particularly popular with a lot of the uses of speed play I have started to
see a correlation between this system and problems I feel that they have enjoyed the myth that they
cure knee pain for far too long don’t get me wrong it’s not a bad system for the right rider for a
lighter rider ride doesn’t put a huge amount of power it’s a good system it’s double-sided so
it means easy engagement the click the bulk the mechanism of the pedal is actually
housed inside the click so it tends to be quite a little bit lighter over the create heavier but
the issue I have with it is it’s as much it’s a significantly smaller contact patch so I mean if
you’re looking at the difference between the two and what that yields is a loss and stability
the other thing that we found is that the way that it will engage is there is a C spring
that pops into these recesses in the pedal and that spring tends to deteriorate quite an
the alarming rate which means that the pedal starts the developed rock and plays quite an early stage
so it’s tickle if you’re riding a lot myself to see that work quite quickly if you are a bigger
rider if you’re a heavier rider if you’re a more powerful rider then if I’m honest this pedal
the system probably isn’t for you if you’re a lighter rider or particularly if you have problems with
clipping in it’s a great system you just stamp on it and go if you’re a bigger rider you might
want to consider moving to the Shimano SPD although I just thought I would question
who needs that level of adjustment I think some idiot once said their bike fitters
dream their bike fairs nightmare you can very accurately pinpoint where the floaties in the
pedal but to be honest you shouldn’t need to do that unless they’re a physiological
the challenge isn’t the rider most people should be able to sit relatively squarely and these these
things you can also influence quite heavily way bleeped location awk support anything wedding
also influenced things like sample flight will influence how a writer how rights
they interact with their parents if you’ve got some of your Sitz rotated in the Sal as a result
of their interaction with a bad saddle they will sit rotated before me their feet will sit like
this is learning lots of people set the cuts and the clip float to allow for that when in actuality
what we should be doing is looking at what’s going on elsewhere why personally question whether
you need that amount of adjustment considering I have zero problems with an espy DSL
the one other person won’t find a paler system that we’re going to talk about today was the Shimano
SPD which is a mountain bike pedal system but with the growth we’re seeing in gravel bottom
rubber writing three of us rode across Vietnam and these we thought were worth mentioning now
this is a mountain biking pedal system it’s designed to be used in conjunction with a shoe
that has a recessed cleat which enables you to walk around every other pedal system here
the cleat bolts to the external surface of the sole which means you end up looking actually
on the cleat this system is again it’s better for mountain biking some elitists might say has no
place on a road bike I would disagree somewhat newer riders will benefit from this system
because you’re it’ll a little neighbor you’d walk around I guess the problem with using it is that
again it shares the same issues with the speed play it’s a smaller contact patch you get a lot
of stability from that as a result, which can lead to problems further up the chain, it’s fantastic
for commuters again usually bound by the boat the choice of shoe offers adjustment double side
entry so again you can just stamp on the thing there are different models with external cages
like this that offers better stability, it’s less affected by things like a mud if your shoes too
jammed up with crap mud then actually you can’t just stamp on the thing it’ll go straight in so
so yeah it’s a really good starting point it’s it’s incredibly durable again the model I would
recommend looking at would be the r5 sorry the M 540 as a starting point this is an M 520 that
I just bought but the m5 40 offers a significant improvement in bearing quality again you’re just
gonna get you’re getting better durability it’s gonna last longer from there you go up to XD FCR
so on and so forth oh yeah well worth using I love pedals these are our findings let us know if you
enjoyed this video you want to see more if you have questions regarding pedal systems are common
points below we will we’ll both do our best to ask them also if you want to know about by
fit topics France and I this morning spent half the morning coming up with lists of content
it’s a long list of bike fit topics that we’re gonna be talking about over the coming months so
if you want to know about something or something that perplexes you just drop a comment and we’ll
do our best to answer it thanks for watching
