New pedals

Today is a new pedal day, which it has to be said is pretty rare. Why I have I got new pedals, I hear you ask (or is that just my tinnitus?). Well, I have this ongoing new bike build project and these pedals are among the last items I need to finish it off (actually the only things missing now are the tyres).

There have been a number of delays in getting all the bit together for this project, with things like the rear dérailleur, I could put it down to Brexit and the difficulties getting on (and off) Brexshit Island since the idiotic stupidity of Brexit occurred. Or again, with the rear dérailleur as an example, the issue around global trade, parts being shipped all the way from Japan to Europe by sea, with the attendant risk of shipping being attacked in the Bab-el-Mandeb (which literally translates from Arabic as the ‘Gate of Lamentation’) off the Yemen. Apparently, some Shimano stock on it way to Europe was destroyed when the cargo ship the container was on was hit by a missile, but I can’t find confirmation of this.

Either way, neither of these things were the reason for my pedals arriving late because my new pedals are made by Hope Technology Ltd, in England. For that matter, the disc brake rotors, also made by Hope, were late too.

So what is so specially about these pedals that I was willing to wait so long for? Well, it ain’t the fact that they are made in England, that would be bottom of the list in decision-making. Getting high ratings in reviews is a part of it, I am always looking to get the best performance I can from the components I use.

There is also the functionality to think about. I want pedals where my foot won’t slip off while I am riding. One approach to this would be to go clipless, I have tried SPD pedals in the past, but after a series of commodity pratfall clipless moments, ending up with two broken ribs halfway to St Andrews, I gave up on them. By the way, if you are going to break a couple of ribs, it is best to do so at the front, as it doesn’t stop you from riding on (unless you go the whole hog and puncture a lung). But I digress.

Keeping your foot in place on the pedals is important for obvious reasons, and there are various ways of doing this, there are the old-fashioned rattraps (but let’s not go there), there are various forms of “clipless” pedals such as SPDs (see above). There are plastic and metal pedals with ridges like teeth on them (these are the most common pedals you see), but these wear down or become polished over time and your foot starts to slip, especially when it is wet. In mountain biking, people have moved away from using SPDs and are now using large flat pedals with pins sticking out of them to provide grip, and this is what I have gone for.

But why Hope, I hear you ask? Well, lots of pedals are made to be disposable, you use them for a couple of thousand Kilometres and then throw them away. I am building this bike to last, I want to make it as sustainable as I can. With Hope F22 pedals, every part of the pedal is serviceable, so as the bearing and the spindles wear out, they can be replaced. So too can the pins, in fact, when they arrive, the pins are in bags, and you have to install them yourself. The advantage of this is that you can adjust the pins to the desired height out of the pedal surface depending on how aggressive the grip you want (or at least that is Hope’s story, it also saves them money by making you do the work of screwing the things in 😉 ).

 
Full instructions are supplied, including the recommendation to torque to 4Nm. Cue search for a torque wench which I found in only the second place I looked, and then found that the smallest hex drive I had was 3mm and not the 2.5mm and 2mm needed to install the pins. Fortunately, it also says that hand tight will do.

Fully built, with all pins installed, the pair of pedals weights in at 368g…

Now all that is left to do is get the bike put together and start pedalling.

PS, the story of my new bike, a custom build Genesis Croix de Fer Ti, starts here.