I’m old as dirt. My first two race bikes employed toe clips and toe straps and that set-up was bad. For many reasons it was bad and any retro-hipster who thinks otherwise is wrong. When Lemond and Hinault started racing on the white Look clipless pedals, everyone but Sean Kelly quickly switched. Talk about a quantum improvement, it was long overdue change. Look made improvements to their models, like the notion of float, and other manufactures jumped in. The new paradigm was a cleat on the pedal, like the original quill pedal system but with a spring loaded snap-in, twist-out pedal. Everyone was happy.
Everyone is happy until you have to replace a worn out plastic cleat. Did I walk a lot in my cycling shoes? Did all liquor stores have rough cement floors with giant moving sanding belts in front of the cash registers? I don’t remember that but I do remember replacing cleats too often and the duplication of cleat position was tedious. I could live with that, practice makes perfect but it was the creaking that drove me to madness. No amount of wax could stop the occasional creaking the cleat and pedals would make while climbing. Rule #65 was being violated before it was a Rule.
Wiser friends had already switched to Speedplay pedals. I was a little wary; they looked weird. One day into using them I understood: total frictionless float, two-sided entry, mindless pedal release. There is no cleat alignment issue as the pedal has no fixed position in the cleat. I was overcome with regret. Why had I waited so long? Why did I stick with creaking Look French pedals? Life is too short for such rubbish and I wasted too much of my cycling life with them. I’ve been using the X-series stainless steel pedals and the original pair was happily going on eighteen-plus years until I replaced the pedal needle bearings and bodies…I don’t want to talk about it. If you employ the good aftermarket cleat covers, and use a little white lightning teflon on the cleat spring bales, the cleats can last a few years. The pedal bodies have grease injector ports. Inject, wipe clean and that is the maintenance routine, easy and fun.
I’ve never used another model of Speedplay so I can’t speak to the advantage of limited float. When riding my right foot does a weird swing out toward the bottom of each stroke. To my mind that is a good thing, the float allows my leg to do that, without that maybe some extra knee wear would occur.
Frank and I have discussed the great pedal switch and his major obstacle to switching pedals is having to switch the whole n+1 stable over and that is not cheap. For Frank and VHM that stable may be five bikes. That’s a lot of pedals. Inertia. Commitment. It’s a big problem. Or one takes Marko’s approach: different shoes for each bike.
I have brand loyalties but if another cycling product is superior in form and function I hope I will see that and move on. Campagnolo gruppos and Chris King headsets are two brands on my bikes that I don’t see moving away from but I would ditch either of those before I would stop using Speedplay pedals. I’m that convinced.
This film is from Peloton’s website. It’s an interesting look at some American cycling manufacturing including Speedplay.
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@King Clydesdale
I'll eat all four of my bikes, my 2 cats and the athlete in my avatar if specialized appears in a reverence article.
That's a bit harsh since Specialized do make some iconic bits of kit (Stumpjumpers, Epic MTBs, Allez road bikes) but for teh largest part they outsource production to third parties and market the cool factor of their brand. They're a marketing company, which I think is out of step with the items that appear in the reverence articles - they're cycling companies first and foremost. Speedplays, I think are US made, closely held and, well, iconic given their shape.
The other stuff you mention, yeah for sure. My pick for the next one is 600mm seatposts so Frink can ride a 56cm Cervelo with a short enough headtube.
@King Clydesdale Like you, I often don't connect with the Reverence articles, but also sometimes I do - there are so many products out there it's just a random stab-in-the-dark as to whether or not a given product will relate. Just because you haven't connected to one yet doesn't mean you won't, or perhaps you could write one for yourself and submit it for approval?
@King Clydesdale Tend to agree... the Reverence pieces that I enjoy are the more retro ones, about things that are/were iconic in their time but no longer widely used. But whatever... if other people like them then fine, I just wait until another article comes along.
However since we're on the subject where I do have a real issue is with articles about sponsors' kit. As a journalist I've had to wrestle with this sort of thing at many levels over the years and it grates when I see it. While people can be over-zealous and see problems where there are none, advertorial is beyond the boundaries in my view.
I would be much happier if it didn't happen at all, but if it has to happen there are protocols which at least mitigate the problem e.g. disclosure statements.
@Pedale.Forchetta
Are they a big family?
@mcsqueak
That's what happened to me in the Coast to Coast except it was a couple of k's. You don't think that's what did for the screws do you?
I put some 105 pedals on my current bike (the start of my love of road cycling. It's my first decent road bike and the first that's been a decent fit). There wasn't really anything wrong with them but they never quite felt right especially when clipping my left foot (my left knee is laterally fucked and full of scar tissue from a bunch of other sporting injuries).
I picked up some Speedplays off ebay cheaply and have never looked back. I love the float and fact that I can not only set the amount of float that I have but also the position of that float.
Maintenance is not at all onerous, a wipe down after each ride along with the rest of the bike and a spray with teflon every week or so. If they're muddy enough that they're not working well the whole bike is going to need a good going over anyway. (a strong squirt from a bidon can help shift crap if you had to venture into the bushes for a comfort break)
I won't be going back.
@the Engine
Ahh... happy days when I could completely dismantle my bike with one of these before realising that I had absolutely no idea where or in which order all the pieces went back together.
My dream is to own a classic, Campag Record-shod Italian beauty, a pair of Dromartis, and finally track down a pair of cleats for the Campag Pro-Fit pedals that are waiting on the shelf. At least I've got the pedals sorted.
When my mother was introduced to cycling, she started out with Speedplays - but when it came to introducing me to clipless, we found out that the company refuses to deal with my country, and thus, are unavailable offially. With no warranty and no readily-available spares, I can't afford it - so Shimano's SPD-SL came instead. Considering total pedal expenses were $40+cleats so far, I guess I won't lose much if I do switch. I was also wary of the unwalkable cleats - as a Cycling Shit Sandwich-er, I used to run in my cleats on whatever surface the course forced me to - often quite slippery surfaces. Now that I have my dedicated shoes that stay clipped to the bike, I might as well adopt Speedplays. I don't need the float, but the weight and stack height are definite bonus-points.
For that matter, dirt is a problem for all cleats, not just Speedplays. Last year, during a 600km tour, we stopped at a cafe with palm-trees outside. The half-rotten dates clogged up my SPD-SLs so bad I had to remove them for cleaning at the end of the day, while only one of the Speedplay users had a problem.
@Gianni Float is great when the fit isn't great. If the fit is spot-on, float is generally (excepting physiological anomalies) not required. For that matter, quite a few pros run without float - a certain COTHO did to great success, for example. Even the ones that use Speedplay might be using them without float (on Zeros, you can adjust). When I got my first Retul fit, my knee was tracking perfect lines - so when I got new shoes and a new bike, we tried the red cleats (float-less) and the motion was exactly the same. The feel, however, was substantially more secure - when my yellows wear out on the first shoes, I'll go floatless there, too.
A major influence, and oft-disregarded aspect, on our pedaling dynamics is the Q-Factor - it's often not narrow enough for us to track perfectly through the stroke. I recall reading an article that summarized the fit-process of Garmin's Tom Danielson - he suffers from supination, causing him to pedal heels-in and forcing him to use wide cranks to avoid the chainstays. His problems were solved by sticking to the float-less cleats, but adding varus tilt to allow him to pedal straight again - and return to his preferred, narrow Rotor 3D cranks.
@wiscot
With the dismal summer we've been having round here, I've been taking my BB30 cranks off for a good clean and grease every three or four rides. If I don't they do get rather noisy. I've got an appropriately calibrated torque wrench from when I had an old car that needed constant attention but it certainly makes the job much easier and takes some of the risk out of it.
@Chris
Ah - I'd forgotten about this tool. @Oli - does it have a name?