If you’ve ever sold bikes for a living, (or even just ridden them), you’ll know that the biggest fear of the newbie, or the moderately experienced cyclist is clipping in. It can strike the Fear of Merckx into the brawniest of men and reduce them to a quivering mess, saying things like “I don’t want to fall over”, “how will I get out if I need to walk up a hill” (hopefully only uttered by mountain bikers) or “I’ll look like a dick if I fall over at the traffic lights.” But as most of you here will attest, it’s happened to the best of us. It’s all part of the learning curve, a curve so shallow and rapidly transient that it’s probably best described as a slightly bent line. The mere act of clipping in quickly becomes second nature, as instinctive as flicking an Ergo, STI or DoubleTap lever to change gear, or reaching down to grab a bottle without taking your gaze from the road ahead.
My own initiation into the world of clipless was in 1991, a year or so after I started mountain biking. Up until then it had been a world of toe clips and straps, which while not exactly easy to get into or out of, was still a better alternative than muddy sneakers slipping off the pedals and gouging six-inch trenches of skin from your shins. Shimano had just released their first attempt at the SPD system (the M737?), and seeing local trend-setter Burgo rocking them with the sweet matching shoes was like witnessing the moon landing; it was right there in front of you, but you didn’t quite know if such a marvel of technology was possible. But it was, and soon a spate of ‘clip-ins’ were appearing from several other brands, including the now long-defunct Onza. Their HO pedal was smaller and lighter than Shimano’s, so it got my vote on those counts alone. It used two elastomer bumpers (similar to those being used in the suspension forks of the day) instead of steel springs for their retention force. You want more retention? Rebuild them with harder durometer bumpers. They were universally considered a pain in the ass to set up, and even more so to get in and out of as I quickly found out.
The Onzas were ditched after maybe a year or less of service, and the only way to go (according to the magazine reviews, and more importantly, advertising) was the Time ATAC. They were lauded as the easiest entry/ release, cleared mud better than Shimano due to their open body design, and were being ridden to victory in just about every World Cup race by the likes of Little Mig Martinez and a young Cuddles. They were a revelation in my clipless experience, and now on my third pair I won’t be changing anytine soon. I still have those original grey ATACs kicking around on my commuter bike, and apart from a tiny amount of bearing slop and some cosmetic gouging from the cleats, are still working flawlessly.
When I bought my first ‘real’ road bike, a steel Gipiemme, the shop set me up with some basic Look pedals, but with Time shoes. Both sucked. It wasn’t long before I’d replaced both, the Looks with a set of alloy-bodied Time Impacts, and the shoes with Sidis. (Still got both, although I’m buggered if I can find the pedals.) A set of RSX Carbons kept the Time-line going, more to reduce weight than for any operational advanatge. The only problem I’ve had has been the left cleat wearing prematurely (from putting the foot down and straddling the top tube Casually Deliberatley at lights) which can make entry a tad frustrating if you don’t get it right the first attempt. And at about $70 a set, replacing them regularly becomes not only a chore but a drain on a poor bike-shop guy’s wallet. Pulling away from a coffee stop on a ride, flailing left foot struggling to engage, slipping off and making a bloodied gouge in my knee warmer was all I needed to convince me to check out Time’s latest system, the iClic.
Now, it seems if you want to make a product sound hip and cool, just take the name of said product and stick an “i” in front of it. So no kudos to Time’s marketing team there, but I guess they took the easy option and one that’s easy to remember because of it’s genericity. All that aside, the promise of piece-of-piss-easy entry was too hard to resist, and when a customer wanted a set ordered, I thought I’d give them a try too. Dan at Sola Sports was singing their praises too, and hooked me up with a set of Carbons at the Velominati Special Deal rate. Cheers Dan!
It took, oh, about ten seconds to declare these the easiest pedals ever to get into. It was like my foot had been magically or magnetically drawn to the exact position for the cleat to engage, the pedal falling at the optimum angle, and the most satisfying ‘clic’ that I’d heard since those very first ATACs converted me for life. If you don’t know how the iClics work, think about ski boots/bindings. (I have never ski’ed, so if it all sounds like bullshit then it probably is.) The secret is in the Carbo-Flex plate under the pedal’s platform, which holds the retention mechanism open when you twist the shoe out. When it’s time to clip back in, the spring is in open position, allowing the cleat to locate with minimum resistance.
And as the Gestapo would tell you, resistance is futile.
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@minion
Bro, what are those?
Bought some sidi's of trademe to get my lady started clipless, and they came with a set of pedals. Those ones. She's still on flats.
@minion
Sounds like when you fell you also damaged the part of your brain that used to prevent you from speaking from a position of ignorance! If you haven't used Speedplays, how can you hate them?
I that the key benefit of Speedplays is how securely they lock you in - or at least how securely they feel like they lock you in. You simply can't pull out of them unless you want to. Add to that how much more I feel like I never lose anything on the pedal stroke (not like when your cleats on say Look pedals can start to wiggle a bit as they get older).
They also put your foot closer to the pedal axle than any other pedal I know of - note you have to lower your seat when you first move to Speedplays - this kind of feels good too. Even with the miniscule adaptor plate which is a cinch to install.
They are the business!
The cleat wear is an issue - but you can get over that by just being a bit careful. As to lubing the pedals, it takes maybe 10 seconds - and you lube the contact points to the pedal. You cant walk on this part of the cleat. I do it about once a fortnight. Never had an issue with them...
NB: when you combine the cleat and pedal together not sure they are that much lighter than other pedal systems.
I have poured-forth on here previously on my love of all things Time. I first "clipped-in" with a pair of white Time Equipe pedals, having been swayed by their design and being technically superior to anything else out there: lower bioposition and the free-float that no other pedal had.
I did make the mistake of not buying new shoes at the same time. Trying to unclip in shoes not designed to take the force of a foot twisting out of the pedal meant that the side of the shoe merely collapsed instead of moving and on more than one occasion I found myself lying in the middle of the road just after I stopped.
Those who owned Time Equipe pedals could always recognise another owner of the pedals in the middle of a race by the mid-corner scrape of metal on tarmac sometimes accompanied by a bike kicking it's rear-end out. You would also nod in appreciation when noticing that another set of Time Equipe's missing one, or both, rear spring covers, something that happened without fail.
They also taught me how to track-stand. The cleats were a two-part affair and all the front cleat did was guide the shoe into the pedal. Originally made of aluminium, and later plastic, putting your foot down at a junction or lights and then pushing off again meant that at the speed they wore down they might as well have been made of cheese. In those days new cleats were a lot of money I didn't have, so I decided learning to track-stand was a more cost-effective way of dealing with the issue
I was briefly seduced onto LOOK pedals a couple of years later after a broken spring on the Time's left me with damaged knee ligaments, but it was only a few years before I returned to Time and the Equipe Pro, the full-metal body which had "slightly" improved cornering clearance and no spring cover to fall off.
I missed the whole evolution to Impact pedals, through a period away from road bikes, suffice to say my MTB's have always had Time pedals. Came back to the road bikes with Time RXS, lovely pedals and a massive improvement and weight-saving on the older pedals. I've now got a set of i-Clic's and must say that I can't really notice the benefit, they're just the latest model.
I do miss the multi-coloured days of the Equipe though, although not the uncertain cornering.
I am always baffled why more people don't ride Time.
They are NZ-made Keywins.
@Oli Brooke-White
Nice story!
@frank
Wow, toe clips and straps... do they still even exist except maybe in museums??? Oh yeah, I suffered with them; because clipless were just barely appearing on the horizon when I was getting serious (which was pretty much about my fifth ever road ride, maybe?). God I hated them... trying to get them cranked down enough on the line. CRANKCRANKCRANKCRANKCRANK. Start hard (crit), tighten up the low gear leg after getting foot in, recrank the other, recrank the starter leg... Jump out of a corner, recrank. Jump with a possible break, recrank. Numb toes. Heading in for a final sprint, crank crank crank never tight enough! I can't honestly say I remember having a whole lotta trouble getting out. Maybe because I was always so pissified about staying IN.
I don't remember when I got my first clipless; it took a while (I blew all my money on my bike and race wheels). I can't remember squat about the first ones except that though I loved the idea (no more numb toes), they SUCKED; very little float and added to the what they then called chrondo malasia and now call something or other patella syndrome that I ended up with not long into racing. Mostly my fault (spinning? what's that? I'm a sprinter! and a stupid one at that!), but feet locked on to pedals with little play didn't help.
My second set - joy! Look-style Ultegras, used hand-me-downs... they are still on my bike today (I think just one of them weighs more than my fork!). I read a fair amount of bitching about Looks up above, but for some reason these puppies (though Shimano knock offs of Looks) have done me right through years and years of racing and other abuse.
And @whoever - what's up with the cornering comments? That's something that sounds plausible in an engineer's head or on paper. Only. If you're really going fast on a hard corner, that foot is up, I'm sorry; it could have an elepehant piggybacking on it and he (the elephant) would be safe as houses. As would be the corner of your pedal. If you are managing to pedal through a corner, really the same thing, just timing, you make sure that inside foot is on the up stroke at the apex.
After spending several years in the early 90's on Shimano clipless MTB pedals - including doubling them up for road use, very much a breach of the Rules - I switched to Time ATACs for the same reasons given by Brett - in MTB they were seen as the ne plus ultra including for their ability to shed mud. (Although query whether this was really an issue in Sydney and surrounds, where wet sand was pretty much as close as we got to mud). Stayed with Time onto the road - Time Equipe Mags, the gigantic red things shaped like an Imperial battleship from Star Wars, still on the RSX Carbon Tis, that felt so light when I took them out of their box for the first time I thought they were going to fly away. I like them but the tabs at the front break (although has not seemed to affect functionality). Have put some KEOs on my commuter as a test. They seem to agree with me so may consider them when the RSXs finally give up the ghost, the Keo seems a bit easier to get into although doesn't have same satisfying click on the way in.
@Brett:
Great hit on one of those not-as-prolific-as-many-might-think pieces of tech that (in my humble opinion) actually changed the way we ride.
Funny how many stories people have associated with these gifts from heaven; I'm no exception. My first memory of clipless pedals...
When I started riding, the group I hooked up with first (maybe about my sixth ride ever) was Team Florida, the racing arm of my college's club (I was a grad student). As I've mentioned, no "collegiate" racing then (what IS that, anyway??).
The first person among us to go clipless was a guy named John Leiswyn, who actually went on to have a relatively lengthy and successful pro career in the US. Young know-it-all punk back then (what 18 yr old road racer isn't? He turned out ok, though, smile); though vaguely remember he'd just either won or done very well at junior nationals.
When we started off on daily rides, he natch had the habit of jumping right off the block, sometimes before word about the decided on ride had gotten around to everyone (they were always yelling at each other about not turning on the engines until after point x, outside of town - small town, didn't take long - dangerous in traffic, broke up the group, not warmed up, etc. Stupid guys).
One of those effervescently clear scenes burned with the crisp detail of a laser etching in my mind: Route decided on - barely - John and a few other big shots zip out onto the campus road, almost sprinting down a slight incline (decline?) to the intersection with the first main road...
John: PUMP PUMP PUMP airrrrrrrrrbooorrrrrrrnnneeeee!!!!! heels over head, spectacular height... yep, wunna dem heels was no longer attached to bicycle. Of course we were all concerned and rushed to his aid. At the same time we were all busting our guts laughing. Thankfully bike and he were ok, and apparently he learned to adjust the tension in his pedals (no memories of what they were, but it was waaaaaay early in clipless history).
@Oli Brooke-White
@D-Man
@Blah
...and of course, in line with ya'll's (above) tales, there's The First-Date-Ride story ... no, I wasn't the one that fell over. At a busy intersection. People laughed. I was one of them. Man, I was mean back then!
(Like many commenters, I don't really remember having much of a problem with clipping out. Or in; Yeah, I remember learning, but not this gut-shaking fear of falling over, or ever even actually falling over - I dunno, though, I could have and just forgotten. I didn't tip over due to pedal naïveté (I don't think); but I did crash on my head a lot.)
For me, the failing to unclip was because with toe straps you pulled back to get out - even if they were cinched right up you could pull out if you wanted to bad enough. With Looks pulling back did diddly-squat. When I fell over in front of the green-eyed vixen my thoughts were directed almost anywhere but my feet, so I pulled back instead of twisting out.
Story of my life, really...
@karolinka
actually you sound like the one with the engineers theory. If you never rode Time Equipe (the original not the later Pro version) then you'll never have discovered this issue, the available lean angle of those pedals was not huge. But then I'll just take it that I go REALLY fast through all corners.