17 Flat Pedals Tested & Reviewed | Carbon Fahrrad Umwerfer Installationssatz

So they take a long time before you can use them with confidence, they are mechnically delicate (even before you factor in mechanism wear from putting your foot down at lights/walking in them, vs replacing a plastic cleat) and the real advantage – is this a real advantage* – comes when you are pulling away from the lights. [If I am riding my road bike the number of times I stop is pretty small, so marginal benefit of marginally faster engagement - I think I'm pretty good with my Keos - probably not so important for me. YMMV.] This is before you get to the fact that they are quite expensive (because they aren’t very popular so unit volumes not high) and (again because unit volumes not high) finding spares is a pain in the arse. I tried them and wouldn’t recommend them to anyone.

They are quite wide though, and that’s particularly noticeable if you have narrower hips and run your feet closer to the crank arms. This leaves an exposed edge on the outside of each foot, which I’ve managed to catch (evident by the gouges in the photos) on the many ruts and rocks that line our rough and natural valley trails in Calderdale.

Time’s retention system is courtesy of a carbon blade as opposed to a spring as found in most clipless pedals, and this has three adjustment settings to alter the tension. The cleat has a standard three-bolt formation, and Time told me at the launch that it’s been toughened up after some reports of the previous versions wearing out a little too fast. I’d concur with this: after a long test period, they’re still pretty much intact after lots of heavy use and inadvisable, awkward cleat-walking. Speaking of which, they’re not even that awkward to walk in because the surface area of the cleat is pretty large, so they’re quite cafe stop friendly. They’re left/right-specific, but switching them around actually gives you a slightly wider stance, if you prefer some extra Q factor (the width between your pedals).

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The pedal body is machined from one piece of 6061-T6 aluminium billet. Time reckons that makes it seriously durable on the trail. It’s certainly beautifully finished.

Inflation of the tyre was trivially easy. A few strokes of the floor pump saw the tyre take up a good seal with the rim. A few more strokes brought on the first of (usually) four ‘pop’ noises as the bead moved onto the retention ledge. The final pop usually occurred at 70psi.

Right off the bat, you need to know there is no price for these pedals. This was a full-on prototype test. But if he can find seed funding, Lohmeyer plans to scale up the Pitbull system into production.

The only issues I’ve witnessed is with two owners of SRAM etape systems who didn’t charge their batteries, so were stuck with limited years in the Pyrenees, but they could swap the front and rear mech batteries round, so low gears for the climbs and then big gears for the descents. Didn’t seem ideal.

Installation was simple. I had been using the wheels for last issue’s racing tyre buyer’s guide testing, so I had to install the valves as a first step. UST rims work fine with tubes, but changing is more difficult than it needs to be because of the tyre retention ledges in the rim. After doing it more than 10 times, it became easier but it never got to be as fast as a non-tubeless rim.

Ridiculous as that may sound, signs of change are a(bare)foot — beloved B-list Instagram cycle-touring celeb-influencer Ultraromance has done the seemingly impossible in raising Bedrock Sandals to a status of coolness in certain circles. Stranger things!

Go to a safe place—one without traffic—to practice starting, stopping, and unclipping while moving. At a stop, one of your feet will already be clipped in; move that pedal to the top of the pedal stroke. Push down on that pedal to start, and as the bike accelerates, find the opposite pedal to clip into and start pedaling. "If you miss the engagement with the opposite pedal, don’t stress," Compton says. "Just look forward and continue to pedal as you clip in with your foot. If the bike is moving forward you won’t fall over—the faster you go, the easier it is to balance."

Tech writer Dave Rome has been spinning circles with a pair since September last year, using them for everything from bunch rides to commuting to gravel rides and trail riding.