Originally Posted by
Burton
@ Medic Zero
Read your review - can't help but think that the fact that you were using SPD shoes on those probablyaccelerated chewing up the grip surface and greatly lessened the grip effectiveness anyway.
Its actually covered under 'Compatible Shoes' and spelt out on
page 24 of the Ergon PC2 manual (reading those things can ocassionally save a lot of greif and misplaced blame).
Caution: To best preserve the longevity of the 3M SafetyWalk® surface on your new PC2 pedals, please avoid prolonged riding with aggressive, open treaded hiking boots or mountain bike shoes with or without exposed metal cleats. The lugged sole design of this type of footwear creates highly focused pressure points which can cause premature surface abrasion.
Same for the stains - its a lot more likely since the liners and soles of those shoes are both orange, that you've just got dye leaking out from wet shoes.
The friction material used on those pedals is a 3M product which is CANADIAN, not German - so clearly - being Canadian, its all my fault! Sorry about that!
Yeah, I noticed it came with a BOOK, I gave up on reading every page before the 24th (!) one and must have missed that when I tried skimming the rest of the manual for useful information. I doubt many others will either. Also, the Chrome shoes I wear don't have an orange liner or sole, I don't know where you are getting that from. I've seen them in olive, grey, and black, mine are black. Funny how I didn't have any problem with the shoes with the orange soles for the first year and a half of wearing them virtually every day, but immediately had a problem when I switched to the Ergons.
What I did read before I bought the pedals (& IIRC on the packaging) touted how scientists in Germany (Ergon) developed a special friction material
in conjunction with 3M. Haven't had any problems with any other 3M products. As I said, the grip sucked to begin with, it just got worse. Who designs pedals that aren't compatible with cycling shoes?! That's even worse fail than wasting effort designing an unnecessary special grip tape that doesn't work and then charging me for it!
I'll accept the blame for not having read all the way to page 24 of the manual to discover that the stiff soled cycling shoes I favor and already own and hadn't had any problems with weren't compatible with my $70 high tech pedals. I don't see where it warned me about the pedals causing stains though. BTW, the Chrome Kursks are anything but aggressive mountain biking shoes. They're like Keds or Converse All Stars with a bit stiffer sole. When I read the manual it appeared to be a few pages of information repeated over and over in many different languages. If they are going to include information about destroying the pedals in the middle of the manual buried after multiple sections in different languages, well they can expect a lot of pedals are going to be destroyed by people riding on them in shoes that they had every reason to expect to be appropriate.