Wear and tear
Crank Brother clipless pedals are nice and easy to use; I could switch from clips and straps over to them without any fuss, muss, or bother. But the cleats are made from brass, and wear quickly. 1800(?) miles now and the cleats look like this, plus don’t have enough cleat surface to keep from sliding around on the pedals and making the most alarming clicking and clattering noises under load.
Perhaps it’s time to investigate some of the alternatives?
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Um, yes, it’s well-known that clipless pedals are as proprietary as fuck. At least the crank brothers pedals are fairly cheap, so if I bail on them I can sell off the pedals and maybe get some of the $140 I spent on three pairs back (well, actually it would be $40 back from REI, then some of the $100 I spent on the other two pairs.)
The wear on the crank cleats does make them pretty unsuitable for me, alas; I started to get foot cramping last week on my aborted 600, and was setting some fairly serious cramping on my last run of P-R-P on Saturday (though most of this happened after I slipped on a rock and sheared off a couple of fingernails. It’s hard to tie your shoes tightly when two of the primary shoe-tieing fingers are dripping blood and going “ouch!” whenever I accidentally flexed the fingernail-bearing segments.) So they’re only good for about 1500 miles, which means I’d need to buy six pairs of cleats a year if I stuck with eggbeaters.
I can’t go back to MKS Silvans, because they give me pretty spectacular foot cramps when I’m running fast; I’d need something like MKS GR-9s instead because they have wider foot supports. So that’d be $120 there (3×$30 for the pedals, 3×$6 for toeclips, 3×$4 for straps) and I’d give up a little bit of pull when climbing (I wear my toeclips somewhat loose for easier access and better float, so that means when I pull up my foot floats upwards about half an inch before the toeclip captures it again.
A friend of mine says good things about one of the cheapish Shimano mountain clipless pedals (M520?) but from the pictures I’ve seen it looks like the cleats shimano sells are also brass.
m520s use SH51 cleats by default. (Meaning you ought to get some with the pedals.)
The SH51 cleats in my SPD shoes hold a magnet. So I’m pretty sure they’re steel.
Shimano has this bewildering variety of road and mountain cleats with different degrees of float and different release patterns. But I’m pretty sure all the Shimano SPD cleats are steel, even if REI’s picture of the SH56’s has that brassy finish.
I personally use the Time ATAC mtb pedals. The cleats also wear quicker than one would like, but they do continue to function rather well and hold the pedals firmly. A decent set can be a bit pricey, as are the replacement cleats. Comparing to a set of Campy NR pedals, circa 1976, I think that they are of equal performance, though I have a little fewer problems with the balls of my foot getting irritated using the NRs. One nobody’s opinion…
Well, pricy tends to take it right out of the running for me. The Crank Brothers pedals are $50/pair, so I’m already $150 into the hole for my three bicycles.
It is nice to not have the pedals go scrape scrape scrape when I’m accelerating away from a stop and don’t have my ds foot fixed into the pedal yet, but cleats are a pretty expensive consumable, particularly if they are delicately referred to as “wear quicker”.
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Pedal alternatives? Because Crank Brothers is the only source of cleats that fit their pedals.
I’m surprised they’re brass; SPD cleats are usually stainless steel. It might be a “we want the cleat to wear, not the pedal” thing.
I use Shimano M324 pedals; they hold up well for the amount of riding I do.