I run the basic Nashbar Clipless Pedal on all four of my bikes, even my lighter road bike. I like having a double sided pedal, weight's not an issue, and they've been pretty durable. I've had them wear out, but never something as bad as what happened this morning. About a mile into my commute, I went to roll out from a red light (taking the lane of the narrow lane) the left pedal completely sheared off at the spindle.
I teetered for a bit and then went down, not too hard on my left side. Luckily the traffic behind me had not gotten up to speed and I had time to drag my bike and ass out of traffic. Not so lucky my shin caught the jagged remains of the spindle on the way down requiring a good amount of internal and external stitches to close up.

This brings up two issues for me. These are mountain bike pedal and as such I would hope that they are designed for a bit of abuse, abuse that my pedals never saw. And now I'm worried about the other sets of pedals too. These were over a year old, so I think I'm out of luck as far as replacement, and would I want a replacement of the same pedal anyways. What's everyone's opinion, is this an acceptable failure when buying lower end gear?

The biggest bummer is that this is my second nasty crash of an already lackluster season. The first was getting clipped by a Big Blue Bus, that's seriously what their called.

Pictures below:

Glad you're ok. Thanks for the nasty injury pic.

Failure shouldn't be a factor at any price range. We're fairly quick moving vehicles and a failure of any sort can result in injuries or worse. QA should be as stringent for a cheap part as it should be for a more expensive one.

It's weird, isn't it? Sometimes seasons are just crash seasons, and sometimes you can't do anything wrong. Hope the rest of you season goes well.

i would at least contact nashbar and let them know. from the pics it looks like it has been cracked for sometime(rust on only half the shaft) maybe a bad casting. ask if there has been a recall. as the other poster mentioned even though its low cost quality should be there. quality=safety

edit to add: cool stitches

That has happened to me twice so far, no ugly injuries so far. The first was on a 30 year old schwinn varsity, right in front of a group of hotties. It was incredibly confusing to my drunk mind. The second time was some beat up old SR road pedal on my fixed gear. I was trackstanding, waiting for some cars to pass. As soon as my weight shifted forward, the spindle snapped in two. I thought my foot slipped out of the toeclip at first.

Maybe it's time to reconsider your notion of durable?

Glad to see you made out OK, all things considered.

Thanks.

I will be doing that.

As someone pointed out, and I noticed too, there was rust on part of the break, so I'm not sure how long it's been cracked. I think this would have been hard to spot regardless, as where the spindle broke is a bit recessed. Still I will be stripping all of the remaining pedals and giving them a good look over before I get back on the bike. Or just get some pedal recommendations. Which will be weird as before this accident I would have endorsed these pedals.

Obviously they shouldn't break like that.

I buy stuff from Nashbar too; when i'm doing it i always wonder if I'm risking a multi-thousand dollar injury to save $5. I try to buy only other brands from Nashbar, or a Nashbar brand if it's clear to me thats its just a rebranded product from reputable company X. I just got a Nashbar stem for ~17 bucks - gonna use it to size a new frame, and if its the right length, i'll get the thomson version. Hope I don't break my teeth out now...

Its amazing to me that more of these parts don't break.

I think you should send your pics in an email to Nashbar, and ask them to buy you some speedplay pedals, a pedal wrench, and reimburse you for medical cost (include receipts). They might pay you right away. Cause that is certainly cheaper for them than a very common alternative.

thats a first i always had them break at the threads

I am surprised that you would even ask such a question.
Totally unacceptable for any weight bearing component to catastrophically fail like that at ANY price range!! Glad your injuries weren't worse and you didn't get clipped by nearby traffic.

Let Nashbar know for your reimbursement, but also for them to be responsible and investigate and recall as necessary before somebody else is hurt even worse than you were.

I have never had a pedal "fail" and have only cycled with the cheapest platform pedals.

I agree with regards to notifying Nashbar.

I only saw a pedal fail catastrophically once ... some carbon Look pedal. Although in that case, when I asked Chris what the weight limit was on the pedal he replied, "Weight limit?" Let's just say that Chris was no featherweight.

Of course, it could be the case that there was no weight limit.

I have broken a left crank at the pedal eye, and I have cracked a nice SunTour aluminum platform pedal, but I have never snapped a pedal spindle. Yours evidently broke along the inside bearing margin, which is obviously a high-stress point. Before the rupture, did you experience any creaking or squealing or other indication of inadequate lubrication of the pedal bearings?

Get well soon, and give 'em hell.

How old was the pedal. That looks similar to a bargain LOOK pedal I bought from Nashbar 10 years ago. I experienced a similar failure one month ago.

No, there was no creaking, and the bearings are sealed. The pedals were barely over a year old.

I'm in touch with Nashbar and sent them the pictures, etc.

Will follow up with everyone when I hear more.

Yikes! Sorry to hear about that Treespeed

The key here is that the pedals are only approx 12 months old. That would seem to point to a manufacturing defect and gives definite cause to take this issue up with the vendor/manufacturer. You might send them pictures of the injury, and copies of any medical paperwork, just to help make the point.

Hope you heal quickly,

Cheers,

Ed

Tell Nashbar you posted pictures of the fracture and an engineer said it could be hydrogen embrittlement. The engineer further said that the entire batch of spindles heat treated with this one are very suspect. Also, the heat treat process the manufacturer uses needs to be reviewed carefully.

That's ridiculous. I will never buy a Nashbar brand part after seeing this.

Oddly enough the only pedal I've ever had break in me was a Nashbar platform pedal. It lasted all of about six months before the cage sheared from the spindle. It was manufactured by Wellgo for Nashbar.

This is exactly what I see.

1. A very strange grain in the metal in that spindle.
2. Looks like the spindle may have been previously partially damaged? Any chance that it was damaged in your previous run in with the Big Blue Bus?
3. I have set of those on my mountain bike, whatever you decide/find out on these would you post it in the end?

I was riding last night (5-12-09) with two miles to go to get home, when a LOOK A5.1 right pedal spindle sheared off. I 'touched the ground' pretty hard, scaped up my Ultegra levers, and ruined a front wheel. Me? Oh, I have a quarter-sized wound on my left elbow, some pretty minor scrapes and contusions on both shins and knees, and a really sore left hip. The clothes came through pretty good, but I have a hole in the elbow of my long sleeve jersey.

This is the SECOND time this has happened, both with LOOK A5.1 pedals, both on the right side. Now I am no featherweight rider (215 lbs.), but I also live in Fargo, ND and these were 'little chainring' events on flat ground. I have to believe that lighter riders sprinting uphill would be putting greater torque on pedals than I do.

The first time a spindle broke was in the winter of 07-08, and luckily I was in the saddle when it broke off, and just had to pedal one-legged home four miles. I thought "huh, that was strange, I've never heard of that happening before" (I am a Category 2 rider from the 80's). This one made me mad, and has me spooked all over again.

In comparing the two A5.1 spindles, the first one that broke has a noticably smaller spindle diameter.

Now, both these pedals were not that old. I can't really be sure of where I actually bought them, it could have ben Performance, Nashbar, or eBay for all I know. I have boxes of parts in my basement, and SOP is to buy stuff for use in the future. Sometimes that could be a week, sometimes several years.

Any advice to help aleviate my heebie-jeebies, or who to complain to?

To loosen up my stiff body, I did a 10 mile ride this morning with new front wheel and a differet set of A5.1's (!), but did most of my pedaling sirtting down.

Wear your helmets, people, you never know when the ground will call you. I also had a DuraAce AX seatpost bolt shear off a few years ago while I was pedaling upright/no-hands, which sent me flying backwards and onto my tailbone.

buzz-man
Fargo, ND

That's a pretty nice pedal to have crap out on you like that.

Where did the pedal shear off? Pictures please?

buzz-man here. Well, a local mechanic brought my front wheel back to life. He described it as "really pretty good" after working for 10 minutes to true it, but I am $10 poorer, and that wheel has less than 100 miles on it.

Well, with any luck, there are four pictures of the problem pedals/spindles. As I was taking the pictures, I noticed that the pedal outsides are not visibly different to the naked eye, and alas, they are both the "A5.1" model. But the spindle thickness is definitely different (though in my case it does not seem to have made a difference).

Again, I'm not sure what the heck can be done about this, but I am still sore (in more ways than one), and if nothing else, I hope it gives someone a reason to strap some crushable polystyrene on their noodle tonight (and tomorrow)...

Just a second. The spindles are the same, they just broke in different places. On one, it broke where it is machined (cast?) to be less thick, and the other it broke a half-inch down the spindle.

One of the pedals on my Coda started coming apart some months ago (part of it was hanging separately from the rest of the pedal). Not sure how it happened, but I rode it to the store and had it replaced. Only pedal issue I've had so far.

Cripes! This stuff is scary. A pedal sheering off when standing would send most of us to the dirt for sure. And in heavy traffic maybe the grave. Please, let us know what the manufacturers say.