aerodave

I'm looking at Shimano's site for info on shoes. I pulled up the service instrucitons for the MA80 (PDF), whish is actually the service instruction for most of their SPD shoes. In it, it reads:

Say what? If I have SPD pedals on my bike (once I buy the bike, that is), why should I not be able to use these SPD shoes?

Or is the above quote totally off base?

Al1943

Looks to me as if they are made to use with SPD pedals which, of course, will work on a road bike as well as a mountain bike. Believe they made a mistake. I believe they meant to say won't work with SPD/R or SPD/SL. Check with your LBS.

Al

slvoid

I means the SPD-mtb cleats aren't compatible with the SPD-road pedals.

cminter

From the shoes I've seen made by Shimano the road models are drilled for three hole or "look" style cleats. The Mtb and comfort shoes are for the two hole SPD cleat. Its seems that most other brand shoes are set up for either of the two cleat styles.

SDRider

Some of the Shimano shoes, especially those designed for comfort/light walking will not work with their SPD road pedals. Personally, I hate SPD pedals on a road bike. I always got hot spots and numbing with them. I have a pair of SPD-SL and I think they are many times superior to SPD. I'd say Look are at least equal to or possibly even better than SPD-SL (don't know for sure, it's been a while since I've had Look pedals). I really like the SPD-SL though.

SPD is SPD though, it's the same cleat and will work with any SPD pedal. Shoes are another matter though and if the cleat is recessed it may interfere with the pedal. SPD will not work with SPD-SL and probably not with SPD-R.

johnny99

What they mean is that these MTB shoes can only accept the small 2-bolt MTB-style SPD cleats. The larger cleats used by most road pedals will not fit on the shoes.

RC2

SPD has a pro -- it works well regardless of conditions, mud, sand, dirt, you name it. SPD has limited float though, so I could never use 'em for high RPM/ long distance riding, my knees are too old (and WHY is the obvious question, when Look, Shimano, Time, and certainly speedplay, make suce better road pedals). For a commuter sure (i.e. SPDs work well with shoes for walking), but for a dedicated roadie, no dice.

aerodave

Ahh...I think I get it. Road-specific SPD pedals are different enough from MTB-specific ones to cause an issue.

Well, I'm in luck, because the stock pedals on the Giant OCR 2 that I'm about to buy are Shimano M505, which are a mountian bike pedal as far as Shimano is concerned. The pedals and shoes ought to be made for each other.

Don Cook

I have two pair of Shimano cycling shoes. One pair is the comfort shoe style that you can walk on comfortably, they take the two screw cleat. I also have a pair of "road" Shimano shoes, they also will accomodate the two hole cleat. I use both pair successfully with the Performance Forte' SPD road pedal. They also worked well with a pair of Richey SPD pedals. I have found that with the SPD cleats and pedals that I've used, that manufacturing variation has caused me to occassionlly have to use a fine grinder and some polish on the cleats and pedals to achieve a really nice operation.

johnny99

Becareful of using MTB cleats on a road shoe. MTB cleats are designed to be used on lugged MTB shoes where the lugs protect the cleats when you walk around. Road shoes have no protection for the cleats, so they will wear out more quickly. Most road-specific cleats have some amount of protection attached to the cleat itself; also the cleats are larger so damage from walking is spread out more.