About four years ago I suffered from a surplus of pedaling platforms. My road bikes had one system, my mountain and cross bikes another–things were getting out of hand (or out of foot, I suppose). I decided to switch to Crank Brothers and put their excellent road pedal the Quattro on my road bikes, Candy SLs on ‘fixed gear bikes and mountain bikes.
For the next few years I became quite the Quattro evangelist, spreading the pedal gospel amongst the members of my bike club like some modern day Matthew or John. I’ve seen a lot of people adopt the egg-beater based system and love it as much as I do. One cleat on all of my shoes, one system on all of my bikes.
The Quattro isn’t as stiff as something like a Look Keo or Shimano SPD-R system, but in my neck of the woods, where clipping out to stop at a traffic light is as important as powering up a hill at full steam, the pedals are an excellent balance between performance and functionality.
So naturally, Crank Brothers has discontinued the Quattro, and will only focus on mountain bike products. I realized this a few nights ago while checking weight specs on their site and couldn’t find the Quattro listed anywhere. A quick Google search and I discovered that the plug had been pulled.
Rather than mourn the loss though I’ve been cornering the market on rebuild kits and cleats, the two things I’ll need to keep using my Quattro pedals for the next few years. I’ve hit eBay rather heavily recently and picked up a few more sets of the pedals, as well as more kits to keep going.
I’m sad though, when the gear all wears out eventually I’ll possibly move to some other system–if I’m going to use a different cleat for road and mountain I’m going to re-evaluate the pedal systems from scratch and I’m sure they’ll be other products out there.
I guess sales of the Quattro weren’t as good as Crank Brothers wanted, but it’s a shame to see such a nice product move off to the bike criterium in the sky.
To (almost) quote the Pixies * “And if man if five and the pedal is six, and the pedal is six and the pedal is six then bikes are seven, then bikes are seven, then bikes are seven…. this pedal’s gone to heaven…” *
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