VP brand #813 cruiser pedals, dangerous!
 

I have about 5 sets of these on various classic bikes I have customized. Namely the VP-813, which is a retro styled pedal made to look like the old Schwinn "Bow" models. A few months ago I was reading on the Schwinn board, about a member who bought a brand new cruiser, which lost a pedal on the first ride. You guessed it, a VP guessing by the appearance, and the fact that another Schwinn I bought had the same brand, but a different style.
Fast forward to yesterday. I have an early 90's Schwinn Heavy-Duti which I had installed a set of VP-813 pedals on. This is my wifes main rider, and it being a heavy bike, she never takes chances on it. This includes standing to pedal, etc. We were prepping for a daily ride around the neighborhood. I pulled out the bikes and unlocked the gate. She rode out into the street as I locked the gate, and she gave out a yell. I spin around to see what's wrong, and there's nothing left but the chrome center shaft on the VP pedal. I have emailed VP, but I don't imagine I will get a response. This is a heads up. If you have a set of these pedals, don't expect them to hold together. And please, DO NOT stand on them whatever you do. It doesn't take much for them to break, standing to pedal could only make things worse.

bump....

What response are you expecting?

Stuff breaks occasionally.

Mmkay, so stuff breaks occasionally when it's used less than a dozen times, and not abused? My point is these pedals aren't safe. I guess I expected someone to care, and check to see if they own a set, and keep an eye on them if they do. I for one am going to weld the assembly tabs on the rest of the ones I own. Maybe that will hold them together.,,,,BD

It's nice ot know the pedals are possibly unsafe, but what exact part failed?

If you look back on one of my threads in teh road section, I made a report of a Ritchey V4pro that physically seized on me while riding (for a clipless, this is extremely dangerous). It turned out to be a lack of grease inside of that particular pedal, which allowed water to fill the pedal innards during wet riding....this lead to water contaminated grease, and thus increased friction. This lead to a thrown roller bearing, locking up the pedal body.

It took me 45 mins to disassemble the seized pedal to figure this out. Yours is already open, so if you can see what broke, feedback would be good. That would allow other users of this pedal to check their own to ensure if it's just a random defect, that they can spot it and remedy it before something bad happens.

These are one of those old school style chromed stamped steel cage, wrapped around rubber blocks. The cage then attaches via bent clips, to a plate by the mounting threads. The first one I saw, the whole end of the tab plate broke off. On mine, the bent tabs pulled out of the plate. So it pretty much looks okay, it just disassembled itself. As there's nothing else holding the cage on, the only thing left is a slippery chrome shaft that spins in whatever direction has more weight. This will either send your foot flyiing off of the front or back, which is never fun. If you're standing, you are most likely going to be hurt.,,,BD

I am working on pictures. Picked up the digital, and it says battery exhausted. In the next hour or two.

Here are the pictures. As you can probably tell, the tabs came unclipped dropping the majority of the
pedal onto the road.No other physical damage is visible.,,,,BD

Yeah, it looks like they needed to not only bend the bits out, but find a way to use a cotter pin to bind those to the slotted inner support. I think enlongating that support would make this easier, but make it uglier as well.

Really, it's just a poor design. It hsould have used mounting bolts.

I seem to recall that long ago we often found this style of pedal usually failed to just a slippery chrome shaft. Seems like that was the very typical failure of this type of pedal back when they were not just retro.

Yeah, I recall them failing too, but after a few years of rough usage, not a short 10-12 rides by a woman who never stands to pedal, lol. I reassembled this pedal, bent the tabs flush against the plate, and hit them with the mig welder. They should stay together now, I hope.,,,,BD