THANKSGIVING UPDATE: I had to repack these brand new pedals 6 weeks after receiving them as they were squeaking badly. YMMV, but why take the chance? Get the special 5-tooth tool if you can find it, but repack these bearings before even mounting them. They come with almost NO grease, I assume to keep claimed weight to the bare minimum, but that's a very poor trade-off IMHO.
I bought a pair of new Look Keo Carbon Blade CrMo pedals, as my Shimano Ultegra were getting pretty ratty, and the Look are $50 cheaper these days. In fact, you can get the Ti Ceramic Look Keo Carbon Blade pedals online for less than the list price of the Shimano Ultegra carbon. SMH. Not this guy. $135 from Colorado Cyclist with the FALL discount (out of stock now I see), no tax, no shipping charges.
They mount the same, but are positioned much differently, so it took a bit to get them dialed in, and is still a work in progress in truth. You CANNOT unclip from the Look pedals by twisting your heel inwards, which is my habit with my L foot, the one I always disengage. That's been problematic, but hoping with time my muscle memory will adjust.
UPDATE: You CAN disengage by twisting your heel inward, but it takes ~ 3X the force. Weird, as the mech looks symmetrical.
After the cleats wore into the pedals a bit, after about 25 miles I guess, I like them a lot. With 4.5 degrees of float they feel "liquid". They may be slightly less prone to hot-spots too, and I do think the bearings are a bit better, even the stainless ones on the CrMo version.
How I came to this decision is a bit of a long story with a happy ending. A friend was asking about bottom bracket bearing upgrades, and I pointed out that while people tend to obsess about those bearings, the bearings in pedals bear EXACTLY the same amount of force, but are much, much smaller bearings, so a better upgrade would be pedals.
He then asked me about pedals, and I have him some basic guidance, like good pedals have large stainless steel (very hard, usually stainless, which can be as hard as 475 Brinell hardness, used in making steel plate targets for shooting practice) plates under the balls of your feet so they don't wear out. I sent him a pic of my Ultegra R8000 carbon pedals, but looking at the pics I noticed the left pedal's clip mech in the back was looking pretty ratty, and it started to bug me.
I conducted a Google Safari, looking around for good pedals for him and was intrigued by Look's Keo Carbon Blade pedals, which ditched the steel torsion springs in back for what Look calls a leaf spring, which is made of carbon fiber. They come in various tensions, 8, 12, 16 & 20 which you install "permanently" until you get sick of looking at them or just want to change the tension for some reason. Then you unscrew a rod and install a different "Blade" for a different tension, or the same one if you like the looks of the newer blade. They have a special TDF version, for example. Some have a pronounced carbon weave pattern, others are just black with decals.
While the lower weight was interesting from a design perspective, what I liked more was the over-sized main bearing next to the pedal arm. It's a cartridge bearing, very much like you'd find in the front wheel hub of your factory wheel. The outboard bearing is a tapered roller bearing, the same as the wheel bearings on your car. You can find the wrench to service the pedals, and a Ti axle to boot for a bargain price of $8.90 (with shipping) here on Ebay. I include it here just for the pics. The product may be crap, or fantastic. I have no clue. They're supposed to shave 22 grams off the already light CoMo pedals with the included ceramic cartridge bearings. Again, the roller bearing is molded into the pedal, so it cannot be replaced.
Needle point roller bearings, the kind used by Look, are designed to take high axial and radial loads, as they have a lot of contact surface and are tapered in the direction of the axial load. Look's are embedded in the carbon pedal, and the machined taper on the spindle comprises the cone of the bearing, so only the tapered CroMo shaft, or Titanium if you've got an extra $150 bucks (you do get ceramic bearings for that price too) lying around, can be replaced, not the embedded bearing.
You can service both bearings by cleaning and applying new grease. As the tapered roller bearing is moving pretty slow relative to a car, I would highly recommend using Teflon grease on it and then a Teflon-fortified wheel grease to fill the rest of the space in the pedal body to keep water and dust out.
I have no experience with it, but Park's new PPL-1 PolyLube 1000 grease might be a good choice too. As for the cartridge bearing, Chris King is on record as recommending Mobil 1 motor oil for his wheel bearings. I'd choose something rather thick, and perhaps "Extended Performance for High Mileage" which has seal preservatives in it. Now you just have to figure out how to get old oil out of, and new oil into, sealed bearings. (???) The only thing I can think to do is use an electric drill to turn the bearing in a bath of new oil. Let me know if you have a tried & true method.
Happy trails!
No comments:
Post a Comment