I'm new to cycling and am currently using a pearl izumi road shoe with Shimano pd a520 spd pedal.
I'm thinking of going to a ( road pedal ). I like to speedplay but they are out of my price range. I am looking a the spd-sl , look and time. Any suggestions ? Pro's and Con's ?
Thanks for your help
Richard

You might look at Campy pedals as well:

another vote for spd-sl's. ive gone from only using spd or eggbeater with a crappy commuting/touring shoe to specialized carbon shoes and 105 pedals. a serious diference in energy transfer, stability and confidence in my bond with the pedals. not good for commuting, or walking but for speed and comfort, very nice.
oh, i wear 49 shoes. one thing i like about the spd-sl is that i really get almost no float (this is using the yellow cleats, which have 5-8 degrees float) which i like very much. if you like a lot of float, these may not be for you.

+1 for SPD-SL, they have them at various price points with just minor differences in axles and weights. There are 105 versions in black and silver, Ultegra in silver, and Dura-Ace in grey. All use the same cleat, both in floating and non-floating. They all have a wide platform to help eliminate hot spots.

Look Keo Sprints. People complain that the Look cleats tend to wear out quickly, but in my experiences they have been pretty reasonable. Three choices of cleat (No float (Black), 4-5* Float (Grey) and 9* Float (Red)). I have the greys currently and think they are very nice.

i love look pedals almost as well as the search function.

oh & campy is discontinuing their pedals.

I quite like my Times. Very good at landing right side up.

Shimano Ultegras SPD/SL's for me.

I use Look Sprint pedals myself, along with some carbon shoes. I've had no trouble with them at all, and love them really.

The cleats do seem to wear out fast, but for the actual "ride" that they give it is worth it to me to replace them every so often.

I've tried Speedplay. Scored 3 on a scale of 10.
SPD gets a 6 on a scale of 10.
I rode Looks for a long time but got tired of missing the pedal when starting up from a traffic light in fast moving traffic. One sided didn't help in those situations.
I recently "upgraded" to Quattros. They score a 9.5 on a scale of 10.
I'll save the Looks for days I'm not riding in traffic.

If you want Speedplays the budget versions are X5's, and the reviews have been good.

Al

^^^^
+1. Without doing a price search, I doubt there are manyquality pedals a whole lot cheaper than x-5's, So If you like Speedplays and money is the issue, there is your answer. I have a pair od X-5's on my 3rd road bike (at some point you have to draw a line).

Just got my first real road pedal (Look Keo)
I LOVE IT!

Used to right crank bros and thought they were great...but these LOOKS feel amazing.

You can get a LOOK Carbon Keo for $99 on bikekit.com (?) and they sell the KEO Classic (the one I have) for about 57$ (killer deal).

Speedplay via ebay.

looks, and shimano SL pedals are great! I have keo carbons.

Time, SPD-SL, Speedplay Zero, Look Keo, Campy, they're all good. I use Speedplay myself.

I really liked my Shimano Dura-Ace SPD-SL pedals. In fact, I preferred them to the LOOK Carbon KEO pedals I have on both my bikes now but I just couldn't put Shimano pedals on a Campy bike.

+1

The really nice part about SPD-SL is not that they have nice wide platforms -which they do - but that you can walk on the cleats without killing yourself. Unlike the look cleats.

I just bought my first serious road bike from a friend in Arizona (I live in Ohio) & had it shipped to me. In advance of having the bike sent, I purchased whatever accessories & parts I would need, so that I would be ready to roll when it arrived.

I had decided to go w/ a mountain bike clipless system, based on the recommendation of several trusted sources, b/c I have not used clipless pedals before & will not be riding competitively for some time yet, so I liked the idea of having a more comfortable shoe for longer day trips w/ lots of stops & such.

When I purchased shoes & pedals, I failed to consider the possibility that the pedals would not fit the crank arms. The cranks are by Cook Bros. w/ a single-sided hole where the pedal stem fits & is adjusted w/ a 15mm wrench. The pedals I purchased are Shimano PD-M40s, which appear to be suited for crank arms w/ double-sided holes & would be adjusted w/ a large allen wrench at the end of the pedal stem.

So now I am obv. not ready to roll & I would like to remedy the situation w/o too much fuss (if possible). I can resell the pedals easily enough, but I would still like to find a set of mtn. bike clipless pedals that can fit these cranks, esp. so that I don't have to replace the shoes as well. Anyone know of any pedals available that would fit the bill?

thread resurrection from jan 2007?!?

Well, I don't really know what the protocol for reviving threads is on this board. I usually try to find relevant old threads instead of making more clutter w/ new ones on the same subject, but maybe that's not how you do things here?

I don't know your specific type of pedal, and Google isn't returning any relevant hits for "Shimano PD-M40", but most Shimano pedals I've seen can be tightened both ways, either with a 15mm spanner or a 6mm (iirc) allen key.

i like spd's and a mtb shoe with a recessed cleat, just because when i ride i like to walk arround when i get to my destination and its pretty hard to walk around with cleats making a bunch of noise

I think it's the 520, the next one down in the Shimano line, that still has wrench flats. If you go on some websites like Performance you can see if the pedals have wrench flats. I think the Allen wrench only thing sucks.

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