I started using the old Look triangular cleats/pedals back in the mid-late '80s, and found them to be a great boon to road riding. New to this thread, I'm an old fart and used to ride a lot up until about the mid-90s when I started to become a fat old slug. I just got back into it in '07 and bought a Trek XO1 cyclocross bike which I've had a lot of fun with over the past three years. And I managed to get back into some decent shape too......relatively speaking. I hope to do some serious road-riding this year. But back to the cleats, I'm pretty happy with the SPDs on the CX bike, and can see no reason why they are, or would not be, suitable for road riding. I can tell that a lot of guys here are very knowledgeable and would love to hear them chime in. I've skipped around in this thread and read quite a bit of it but haven't hit all of the nearly 900 pages yet, and while I'm sure the merits of different pedal/shoe/cleats has been discussed at some length, perhaps one of the gurus might give us a quick synopsis on what works, what doesn't, etc. I like both the old Looks and the SPDs.
I may just upgrade the SPD's I'm using, they are an old 1-sided model, that's the reason for me looking into something new.
last pair of bars I had that looked something like that had a different name. "Bent". ok, only one side looked like that. happens when a car runs over your Cinellis. you shoulda seen the wheel
I tend to move my feet around a bit much for normal road pedals, and I was originally steered toward the mountain SPD's because they were way easy to bail out of when the tension is set soft. I don't like and won't use SPD's on my mountain bike at all. The road pedal would probably help correct what is obviously poor feet positioning, but the only ones I've checked out made me feel like I was stuck in an old ski binding that wouldn't release. There have to be some that let you move around a bit, and are easy to yank out of, but I'll probably end up with 2-sided newer SPD's.
I found that the old Looks weren't too bad to bail out of when required, maybe a degree or two moreso than the SPDs, but they could be tensioned loose or tighter as well. That said, I've not yet tried SPDs on my road-bike which is an '85-vintage grind-and-find with Looks. I am going to get a new road bike in the next month or two and am thinking I'll just run SPDs on it because I like the shoes I use on the XC bike and figure I'll just use them on the road machine as well, at least for now. I'm totally out-of-the-loop, however, where it comes to what is cool, in, what works best, what sucks, just post circa 1990 bike-tech in general, so have a bit of catching up to do. I'm looking forward to it. What's this 10 & 11 speed freewheel shit? My roady has a 6!!!
Wow, that was easy. I should be set and ready to ride. Too bad they are calling for 6 inches of snow tomorrow to Saturday.
Picked up a set on sale just now at Performance. They look like what I'm after, I'll mount them up tonight and see as soon as the rain clears. I got the light action one, the additional amount of movement it allows seems perfect.
How many's it gonna take?! Johhny T was one of my 'heroes' in the cycling world. Him and Davis Phinney. M
Nothing iffen yer riding less than an hour. Mebbee up to 90min. Then ya (at least I) get hot spots under the cleats where there's lots of pressure. The nice thing about the big platform under yer feet with the Looks, Times, and Shimano pedals is well, its a big platform. I have my Crosshairs set up with Time ATACs. The Fetish has SPD-SLs. Guess which set of pedals I like to ride longer. On the mtn bike and cross bike, I ride M210 mtn shoes with a carbon sole and on the road I ride Sidi G5s with a nylon sole If you can get in and out of SPDs you can get in and out of Look-style pedals (that includes the SPD-SLs) I liked the Speedplays when I rode em. I bought SPD-SLs right before the 'fixed' Speedplays came out. By then, I'd already bought 2 more pair of shoes and cleats, so changing again was right out. M
Remember: tighten towards the front of the bike on both sides and loosen towards the back of the bike on both sides. DAMHIK how hard it gets if you get the non-drive side wrong. M
Good info, I'd not considered the relative size of the cleats, issues of pressure, etc. I've used SPDs for the last three years on my CX bike and have basically just ridden it for exercise. Most rides have been roughly an hour or maybe a little more, but I've done a few that were longer. I don't recall having an issue, but will pay more attention as I plan to do some longer rides this season, including a century in May. Thanks, that's the sort of stuff I'm interested in learning.
Just to provide a counterexample: I had a lot of trouble with hotspots on long rides when using SPD or Crank Bros mountain pedals with cheapie soft-soled shoes. I got some stiffer-soled Sidi MTB shoes but stuck with the small Crank Bros pedals, and haven't had hotspots or any other foot problems since, even on all-day rides. Edit: Sidi, not Givi. Wrong Italian company.
That is my experience as well. As soon as I went to a firmer-soled shoe, hot spots with SPD pedals went away. I suppose if I ever went headlong into road racing, I'd look for a proper road shoe, but for now this works well.
What is the best way to adjust new cleats? I just installed some SPD-SL shimano 105's and the cleats just don't feel right. I have the crank centered over the ball of my feet but I think I need to adjust the angle/direction/whatever of the cleat. Any insight? Lou
