Just Riding Along: Pedal Fell Off
Pedal broke
Should’ve realized that the creaking noise was from the Time RX-S pedals and not the bottom bracket or Paragon slider bolts. I’ve seen pedal axles unthread from a crank, FSA’s crank issues, chains break, spokes, and other mechanicals. This the first time in two decades of riding that a pedal fell off. On a climb. In Maui.
Besides bumming me out during vacation, I remembered that I forgot about the recall. I’ve got dozens of bikes, boxes of gear, and just grabbed a pair of pedals for the travel bike. The other Time pedals in the Hugga HQ garage have the “fixed” dot on them. This pair did not.
The bearing lock collar would not stay tight on the pedal body. Normal use would cause the bearing collar to unthread from the pedal body and, once it unthreaded all the way, the pedal body came off the axle. The solution in manufacturing was to use locking compound on the bearing collar. We then had to recall as many pedals as possible worldwide and use the same locking compound. You might check to see if your pedals have either a red, silver or gold dot on the bottom of the pedal body somewhere as that would indicate that they had the locking compound installed as some point.
In other words, from an insider’s view that talked to me about the pedals, “A total fuster clucking mess.” Lucky no one got killed or severely injured from these French-f’d up pedals, including me.
I wasn’t sprinting, cresting a steep climb, or flying into the apex of a curvy road corner like this one.
On a road like this
Just riding along, up a coastal roller, and suddenly my foot broke free. It was just hanging there with a pedal attached to a shoe. I looked down, saw the bare axle, and slowed to a stop. After carefully stepping down, I then checked the other bearing lock collar and yep it was loose as well. I hand tightened both of them and we rode to Kihei and the South Maui Bike Shop. The mechanic used a universal pipe wrench to tighten the collar, cause he didn’t have the right tool and I suddenly realized that Time pedals were hard to find in shops.
Great.
A Tecate tall boy and can of Pringles later, I mellowed out, laid on the beach, and found the recall notice from 06 on the web.
There are a couple days left on this vacation, so I’m not going to go into standards in the industry, safety, and the risks we take riding bikes. I’ll also try to not wonder how fatigued the Ritchey WCS 4 Axis stem I have on that bike is.