Clipless pedal question
 

Ok I'm sure this has been covered before (and I will commence searching after I post this) but I want know what I should look for in a clipless pedal. Roadbiking, 70-100 miles a week, I don't want to spend a fortune on pedals and shoes but don't want to buy junk that won't give me a fair trial. I have always had toe clips but am thinking I should give them a try. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

My bike originally came with toeclips and I had the same questions when I went into aPerformanceBike store. The manager suggested starting with the campus pedal. They are SPD and you can use the mountain bike shoes like the Shimano MO21(which I have). The pedal is a regular flat pedal on the one side and clipless on the other. It's a great way to work into the clipless pedals.

I recently last December got the Performance Forte SPD pedals, which have the clip stuff on both sides.

One word of caution, if you get road shoes, be careful, because the hard bottom can cause your shoe to slip off into the wheel or worse, which is what happened to me, so I'm staying with the mountain bike type shoes, which let you walk around.

I use the MTB style pedals as well. (Shimano SPDs) They have the clip-in on either side feature, and I use a sort of "casual" MTB shoe that I can walk in quite comfortably. For severe off-road use, I'd reccomend a tough, dedicated off-road shoe with the big toe spikes and all. You need some armor.

Don't worry about sneers from the dedicated roadies in their form-fitted shoes and aero pedals; 98% of riders will notice no difference.

you want first of all the obvious things, reliability, durability and reasonable weight. Ease of clipping in, adjustability and ability to handle mud (probably not a problem for a roadie) should be factored in.
As far as I am concerned the best clipless pedal around is the stuff made by Crank Brothers. Crank brothers has variations of their pedal but all of them use the same mechanism. This pedal has few moving parts so little to go wrong. Do a search on this forum and bicycle product review websites and these have excellent reviews.

A combo deal like
http://www.pricepoint.com/detail/126...ome-Pedals.htm
is the best way to go to get started. Check out pricepoint.com for their other combo deals with crank brothers stuff, they have a decent amount with different shoe combos.

First, you'll need to determine whether you'll be doing some walking off the bike, in which case mountain shoe/pedal combo will allow you to do so in comfort, OR stiff soled road specific shoe/pedal combo which make you walk like a duck if you know what I mean. Lots of casual roadies prefer mountain shoe/pedal combos....nothing wrong with that.

This is what i use.

I just started in April with these shoes and pedals and have them on both road and mountain bikes. I found them very easy to use and adapt to. I would caution you against using one sided pedals where you have to rotate them to line up with your foot each time.

This is an unnecessary hassle and the eggbeaters, you just push down and go. You don't need to look. With platforms on one side and clips on the other, you will spend a lot of time trying to line everything up.

Thats actually a very good deal, nice link.

Thanks for the link! I had been looking at the egg beaters and they seemed to look like an easy to use system. I assume they have some float? I thought the MTB's were the way to go since I could walk around a little in them but hate to get the evil eye for wearing them... lol Much appreciated all!

Eggbeater type pedals (eggs, candy and mallets) all have plenty of float. All work with SPD compatible shoes and are very easy to get in and out of.

^^ All crankbrothers have either 15 or 20 degrees of float, depending upon how you install the cleats. They recommend that you start with 15 and go to 20 only if you find 15 to be insufficient.

I started off about 1 year ago on Mallets and loved them; just recently swapped them onto my MTB and got new Candys, which I also like. Actually I can hardly tell the difference since the basic mechanism is the same.

I'm not sure I'm ready to go to the plain ol' eggbeaters (i.e. no platform); I like to have a little platform to spread out the weight. The Candys and Quattros seem to be a good compromise between platform size and weight.

Eggbeaters for road biking? Gimme a break. Pick up a nice set of Looks or SPD-SLs.

And why not EBs for road biking? What's the big deal?

Well I ended up with a set of Shimano pedals and Specialized shoes. I did go with the basic's and decided a small platform (coupled with the fact that I can adjust the tension on these as opposed to the egg beaters). So far so good! Thanks for the insight.

its an excellent deal--these eggbeaters are stainless steel (rather than chrome) and they retail 119$ ALONE!

the shoes are 2nd to top-of-the-line for Answer, and they're very high quality.

I use this combo for both mountain and road biking. The Sunday-morning-in-full-Lycra-roadie crowd may not approve of it, but theyre much more versatile for the everyday biker. My friend is setting aside his 200$ Sidi Genius 5 for a mountain set so he can actually walk in them

thers nothing wrong with egg beaters for road biking. I dont get why that would raise concerns or anything, they are good pedals and very light

Buy your pedals on e-Bay. GREAT bargains there!