Gods lonely man

I've been using for years some old Zeus track pedals, they have this rare shape on the plates, like a curvature, is this the kind of wear that vintage cleats cause? I always wondered, I have never seen that shape in other set of vintage pedals.

T-Mar

Yes, that is typical cleat wear. Of course, it's more common with softer, aluminum cages. I had a set of Campagnolo SL pedals that looked worse than that after two seasons of competition.

Edit: Note that the flip tab also broke.

JohnDThompson 

Yes, especially if you use metal cleats on an aluminum cage pedal like that. Eventually, they can break. I often wonder why Campagnolo used aluminum cage plates for their Superleggero and Super Record pedals instead of titanium, like Zeus used on their model 2000 pedals. Titanium wears much better than aluminum.

Gods lonely man

I didn't knew old cleats caused such a damage, I thought they were plastic.

T-Mar

Originally, cleats were leather. I'm not sure exactly when they started moving to aluminum but it was the cleat material of choice during the post war period, through the 1970s. Some nylon cleats started appearing in the 1970s but the move didn't gain any real momentum until the 1980s.

repechage

Campagnolo did learn, slowly. I have two early superleggera pedal sets, they have the same cage shape as the steel ones less the strap loop. These were known to crack, so soon enough they added material to the windows at the cleat contact side, the chamfered section, and solved that problem.

my guess on retaining aluminum, much less expensive, easier to get anodized.
we used the steel reinforced French nylon cleats... deeper too.

the venerable TA cleats in any of the models were just not deep enough, but were almost all that was available for a long while. Berelli made a good clear too where one model had a deeper wall on one side, spotty importation.

T-Mar

While I agree that Zeus' 2000 pedal was the better design, I believe it was the weight that drove Camapgnolo to chose aluminum over titanium for the cages. Aluminum is less dense than titanium and the cages would haves been about 40g lighter in aluminum. While wear was may have been a concern, lighter weight appear to have been a bigger factor..

If you wanted deeper cleat slots, the solution was track cleats. I believe the Barelli model being referenced in the previous post was actually a track cleat. I recall TA having a red plastic cleat during the boom but the slot was a steel insert, so wear with aluminum cages was even worse. The best solution against pulling out and wear issues were the Cinelli Uniblock cleats, if you could withstand the snickering. There were also a few roadies who used the Cinelli M71 pedals.

steve sumner

I used the Cinelli 2000 uniblock cleats and then moved on to M-71 clipless. I like the no float solid like rock
feel. b4 that I used slotted cleats that were actually made for the shop I worked at: Laffens Bike Shop in
San Diego. Laffens cleats were al=alloy with a strip of stainless for strength. problem was stainless is brittle
and the cleats always cracked. Old man Laffen was proud of his creation so he would replace broken cleats
at no charge.we must have lost money on those.!

randyjawa 

Interesting wear results. I have not seen this before, at least I do not think that I have. Anyway, I have a lovely set of Zeus track pedals, in case the OP is in need. I can post them on the for sale forum, if that is the case...