PEDALS

What good is a crank without pedals?  Mind you, the pedals are one of the most important parts of a bike. You can manage without gears or brakes.  But pedals connect your feet, and you, to the drivetrain.  Without them your bike would be like a car without a differential - the engine is not connected to the gearbox.


Needless to say, clipless pedals are the order of the day.  The cleat-pedal system that was introduced by Look in the eighties has revolutionised cycling.  Having your feet locked to the pedals means that the upstroke becomes as much a part of your power transmission as the old downwards push - you leg energy is being utilised through the entire cycle stroke.  Not only has this made available much of your leg power, but it also allows us to train for a smoother, fluid cadence, and through this reducing stress injuries.


I have used a few different pedals over the years.  Currently I am using the first clipless pedals that I bought, a pair of Look deltas that I bought as NOS in November, 2006.  My Giant came with Shimano 105's, they wore out and I replaced them with Exustar E-PR101 (262 gm a pair).  They are still good to go, but I swapped them out for the old Looks when I bought some new shoes, and could not be bothered getting new cleats.  I have a few new sets of Delta cleats, so the Looks went back on.

ANYWAY...
First task:  what is available?  Homing in on a few brands that are know to produce good pedals, I visited each manufacturer's website and accessed the models and salient details of each - cleats and weight per pair.  
Second task:  what price?  I did the rounds of websites to find the best deals possible for the affordable pedals.  Of note is a ratio that I created - Price/weight.  The higher the ratio, the worse a deal it is.  This is significant, as a slight price increase matched to a proportionally lower weight could be a worse deal.

Looking at the range of pedals available (of a reasonable price) I  sorted them in order of weight, and then targeted pedals that weighted under 300 gm/pair, and initially under NZ$200 a pair.  This then narrowed to those under NZ$100/pair, as it was clear that there were a few pedals with low weight and very good $/gm ratio.
The Look Keo, Exustar E-PR100 and the Wellgo R168 ranged over 8 gm difference, yet the $/gm ranged from 0.66 down to 0.27.  Although there were a few pedals with much lower $/gm ratios, those pedals were much heavier than those considered.


As indicated in the table, the best deal that I found were the Exustar E-PR100P pedals from Ribble (ribblecycles.co.uk), for the total of NZ$68.55.

NEXT:  the chain.