Originally Posted by
Andrew R Stewart
The photos show both a left side (non drive side for single bikes
) crank arm and pedal. My first thought is that the pedal wasn't installed with grease on its threads, resulting in galvanic corrosion. I see what looks to be rust on the steel axle suggesting enough time exposed to water, add road salt and time and you have a stuck seatpost, I mean pedal.
The drive side was also stubborn, but did unscrew correctly. It did not appear that the previous owner - or whoever installed the pedals - put any grease on the threads, so the corrosion theory may be correct. I also strongly suspect the non-drive side pedal was cross threaded, though I wonder if someone could screw it in all the way if it was cross threaded at the start. It was very, very, very difficult to get that pedal to budge at all. A voice in the back of my head kept telling me to give up and ride it with the pedals that it came with. (The toe-clips were a little short, and I had a pair of MKS city pedals with longer toe-clips I wanted to put on, but I knew I could just remove or replace the toe clips.) However, knowing that it just wasn't right made me want to see what wasn't right about it.