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Old 01-29-11 | 10:55 PM
  #57  
Ken Cox
King of the Hipsters
 
Joined: Jan 2005
Posts: 2,128
Likes: 2
From: Bend, Oregon

Bikes: Realm Cycles Custom

Adjusting cleats: very tricky.

Standing on both feet, raise your heels just enough to break ground.

Feel where the balls of your feet press into the floor.

That gives you the fore and aft of your cleats.

Stand and lift your heels again.

You might feel the pressure on your foot a little more to the center of your foot than on the actual ball of your foot.

This will give you left and right.

I have both my cleats adusted as far to the outside as possible.

Next, walk wiith wet bare feet on a surface that will show your footprints clearly.

If you walk with your toes out, look at the total angle your toes stick out on each foot, and adjust the angle of your cleats in the other direction, but only half the angle.

So, if you walk with the toes of your right foot turned out 20 degrees to the right, adjust the angle of the cleat on your right shoe ten degrees to the left.

You don't need to actually measure the angles.

You can eyeball the angle you walk with your toes out and estimate half of that as a correction in the other direction.

Interestingly, when you turn your shoe over to make this adjustment, you will make the adjustment in the same direction your toes stick out (toe out to the right, cleat angled to the right, half as much); and, when you turn the shoe back over, sole down, the cleat will angle in the opposite direction (to the left), the correct direction.

If you could make a perfect angle adjustment, you would want zero float cleats; and, since you can't make a perfect adjustment, you want cleats with some float (normal).

If you go to someone who has credentials and does this for a living (not a bike shop), he will use zero float cleats since he can get the angle exactly right.

If you walk with your toes out, and if you have made a cleat correction inward, your heels might occassionaly hit the the crank arms.

You can reduce the angle, move the cleats more towards the center, or just live with an occassional heel strike.

I hit on the right crank arm regularly, but I don't notice except to note that I have polished the right crank arm with my heel.
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