Short story - I want to rebuild my M324 pedals.

Long story - I'm chasing a noise that may or may not be the pedals, but these have done a lot of work and seeing you can rebuild them, I thought it might be fun to give it a go, even if it doesn't cure the strange noise.

Has anyone rebuilt the M324s?

Shimano have an exploded diagram of the things. This shows a dust cover at the outer end (easy to get out I imagine), then a nut and lock nut inside it to tension the bearings and to hold the whole lot together. These need a pair of special tools - basically two tube spanners, one of which fits inside the other.

Do you need the special spanners?
Is there a work around?
Has anyone priced them (shops are shut here now)?

Or maybe I should just give my lbs some more grey hairs (we need an 'evil' smilie)

If you're interested in the strange noise I'm trying to cure, there's a thread covering it here, but there aren't many options left to suggest. I'm now in 'slowly rebuild the bike and hope it goes away' mode ... which it seems to be doing on its own.

Richard

I rebuilt a set of SPD's, differrent model (M747). My LBS loaned me the tool to open the bearings, but you probably could improvise. If you can service cup and cone bearings you can do this. I didn't use any special tools for the lock nuts, I was able to get something on the race while I tightened the locknut, can't remember what it was, but some common tool.
I googled up a re-build tutorial, but you're talking basic cup and cones here.

The problem is adjusting the bearing clearance. You have to hold the cone in place while tightening the lock nut, both of which are inside a thin tube. The two concentric thin wall sockets make this easy.

I've adjusted similar bearings using a small socket on the locknut while holding the cone steady with a small screwdriver blade pushed against it's side. This was a real trial-and-error process and took a lot of tries before I got the adjustment right.

I had the shop guys at work machine a socket for me to allow it to fit into the pedal bore, engage the hex on the cone, and allow an 8mm socket to fit inside of it. Because the square drive had to be cut away, I use vice grips to hold the outside of the socket. It's not pretty, but it works. With some patience, I'm sure you could make the same thing by hand with a Dremel or similar rotary tool, though a lathe made quick work of it.

I've often done SPD pedals with just an open end wrench and a 1/4" drive socket. You use the open end on the adjustment nut and the socket on the lock nut (I'm not giving sizes here as there are some that differ by a mm, or two. Just measure and it will be obvious if it's correct, or not). It's nice to have the nested socket special tool (mine is MIA), but you can go without it. If I remember correctly, you will need 22 3/32" loose balls for each pedal. A good pair of tweezers, plenty of time, and patience, is what you need to do these pedals. Put some grease in a small cup, or whatever, and put the loose balls in there and get some grease on them. If you don't, they will be all over the place. Otherwise, it's no different a job from doing an adjustable cup BB or threaded headset. Nothing tricky going on here. You WILL need the special Shimano PD-40 for the pedals that have the splined axle lock nut (the one next to the pedal wrench flats, not the bearing lock nut). It's a shame as they used to include this tool (it's plastic) with new sets of pedals, but now you have to buy it. Fortunately, it's less than $3.

I would not even try to do this job without a vise and some axle vise jaws to hold the axle. Juggling cats would be much easier. I did a very long write up on this whole proceedure a few years ago on this forum, but I'll be damned if I can find it. A lot of the really old postings seem to be gone from the database. Too bad about that.

Not worth it for a shop to do it. This is pretty much a DIY'er job.

Almost all Shimano pedals - SPD and SPD-SL alike - have the same axle and bearing design. The one notable exeption are the DuraAce pedals which contain an additional set of roller bearings that sits between the two sets of ball bearings on the axle.

Thanks for the replies. You confirm what I'd suspected. I'll practise juggling the cat for a bit (love that line) and then give it a go

Richard

My preferred pedals are 324s, so if it works or fails, let us know.

I pulled the pedals today, flipped the end cap off one of them. It actually look pretty well greased in there. Unfortunately, none of my sockets will fit in there to undo the locking nut (it's a fair way in) so I'm going to have to source some tube spanners - my lbs was shut for the Tour Down Under so I couldn't make an immediate enquiry. It looks like a pretty straight forward job though ... if you discount the chances of tipping about a thousand tiny ball bearings onto the shed floor.

Richard

Upon further thought, my comment about axle vises really should have been "nice_to_have". What you do need is something to hold the axle steady. You could do this with a pair of ViseGrips. Just something to give yourself a steady target. As I said before, make sure all of the little balls are greased up and put some grease on the axle shaft. Then - patiently - start placing the balls, one by one, on the axle shaft using tweezers or a decent pair of needle nose pliers. The grease should help them stick. Best luck ;-)

I managed to find a shop in Adelaide that has the correct tool to do the locknut and cone nut. The price? $60

Sorry, but that's just ridiculous. Looks like I'll be using a cheap tube spanner for the locknut and jamming a screwdriver down beside the cone nut, or some other form of butchery.

Richard

Okay, da deed's bin done

The right pedal, which is the suspect one, had obviously had water get into it as the grease had turned brown and it looked pretty mucky. I did have a fall on that side about 18 months ago but never detected a bent pedal shaft. Both shafts have black marks on the bearing surfaces but seemed smooth enough.

Quarter inch drive sockets fit into the housing quite nicely. I was able to get one socket onto the cone nut and one onto the locknut ... just not both at the same time. This made adjusting it easy and doing up the locknut an interesing exercise in jamming a small screwdriver between the cone nut and the housing and hoping for the best. No swearing but I do wonder if I've done things up tight enough.

Neither pedal had the requisite number of ball bearings - shimano are getting cheap on us and I wonder if this explains the black marking on the shafts. Neither pedal had the same number of ball bearings either, and both had an odd number of balls ... so I put the larger number on the inside bearing guessing that this is the bearing that does the most work. Thinking about it now, I'm wondering if I had that back to front because the outer bearing is probably larger. I'm not pulling them apart now.

The inner bearing is about an inch inside the housing which made getting to it fun, but a greasy screwdriver soon had the balls in place.

Just a fiddly, annoying job. Having the right tools would make adjustment easier but I think I'll get away with my efforts.

And following with my principal of always finishing a job on a positive ... I'm not test riding it till tomorrow

Richard

Hah!
After 5km, one of the pedals is binding, so obviously I didn't get that one right. It's also the one that was noisy so I guess it's just following it's normal pattern.

Richard

Did you manage to remove the play in the bearings (i.e were they smooth again just like when new)? I've got the same pedals (m324) and one side has developed significant amounts of play and the bearings seem dry. I'm contemplating servicing them myself but can't find that shimano tool anywhere (well not for a reasonable price anyways).

I had no luck trying to remove that play, but with the rebuild, it's only there if you go looking for it. There is a long, plastic bush on the crank side of the pedal and I suspect that if this were a better fit, there wouldn't be that wobble, but you can only get rid of it by doing up the bearings too tight. Interestingly, I first noticed this play after doing up the pedal that's just gone tight on me, then pulled it apart and had another go only to discover that you can't remove the play. Anyone like to bet that if I'd left the pedal alone it wouldn't have bound up?

Regarding the tool, I know I've seen tube spanners in about that size somewhere, I just haven't gone looking. With a tube spanner for the cone nut and a quarter inch socket on a long arm for the lock nut, it should be possible to do the job properly without enriching Shimano's coffers. Jamming a thin screw driver against the nut seems to work but it's obviously hit and miss.

On a positive note, the pedals are silky smooth under my feet now.

Richard

Resurrecting an old thread...

I'm in the process of relubing and adjusting a nearly new pair of Shimano M324 pedals that developed some play and a rockcrusher like sound. So far I have one pedal disassembled, degreased, regreased, and reassembled.

The Shimano exploded view specs 62 bearing balls - which is for a pair of pedals. It shows 14 balls for the inner bearing, and 17 balls for the outer. That's how many were in the pedal I've relubed.

I slipped the pedal's plastic bushing over the spindle, and held it about 1cm away from the crank side gasket. Then I filled the gap between the bushing and spindle with grease. Next I loaded the inner bearing balls onto the spindle around the end of the bushing. After squeezing some grease into the pedal housing, I carefully inserted the spindle (w/ balls and bushing) into the housing, and gave it a twirl to seat the balls. At that point I was able to remove the spindle leaving the balls and bushing behind. I made sure the bushing was seated, added some more grease, reinserted the spindle, and went to work on the outer end.

BTW, I found the special TL-PD33 tool at biketoolsetc. It cost about as much as a new pair of M324's.

HELP !!! I did a stupid thing. I removed the cleat mounts on a set of shimano PD324 dual side pedals to let my son use while he was learning to ride. Now that he is advancing, he wants to try cleats. BUT, I can't figure out how the springs hook up. I see how the rear cleat holder goes on the pedals but can't figure out the springs. I just need to figure out how to put the tension on the springs. does one end go into the adjuster box?

Thanks in advance for any hints you can give me.

The dead awake once again...

might help.

https://si.shimano.com/pdfs/si/SI-41N0G-001-00.pdf

https://si.shimano.com/pdfs/ev/EV-PD-M324-1972A.pdf