Speedplay pedals need a little love and attention. These are the essential maintenance tips for Speedplays. I wish I had followed these from the first time I bought them. It has been expensive not following maintenance procedures.
Why Do Speedplay need more Maintenance?
Speedplay use three tiny bearings within the small pedal. Over time, grease escapes, leaving the casing dry. This can cause the bearings to rub together and they soon become damaged. Once they are damaged the pedal won’t revolve, and it is really hard to fix. You would need to take pedal apart, get new bearings. Your local bike shop almost certainly won’t be able to help (at least in my experience).
Speedplay say that although their pedals require more maintenance, it enabled them to consider a more efficient pedal system.
Greasing Speedplay Pedals
The most important job is to add grease into the pedal every 2,000 miles (or at least every year)
For this job, you need
- A small screwdriver to remove casing.
- A grease gun, and Grease. Speedplay have this specific grease gun. Speedplay grease gun at Wiggle (£39) surprise Speedplay is expensive! I bought a speedplay specific grease gun, but you might be able to do the job with just a normal grease gun.
- Also Speedplay super lube. (£6 at Chain reaction cycles). I advise getting this tube. It makes it much easier to refill the tube. I just bought some normal grease, but it was really messing pushing into grease gun.
Job difficulty 5/10
How to Know it needs Greasing
- After 2,000 miles or three months.
- Any sign of friction and noise when spinning pedal
1. Remove Screw from outside of pedal
Note: Take care not to lose this small screw!
Unscrew and them use screwdriver to remove plastic casing.
This is where you squirt the grease in.
- Now comes the fun part. With a grease gun, force the grease through the pedal.
- This was hard work, you need to keep the grease gun held against the pedal. I found a lot came out the wrong side.
- Eventually, you should see some dark dirty grease coming out the other side. This is somehow very satisfying and makes you to start enjoying the job. When the thick dirt grease stops coming out, that means you have filled pedal with nice new fresh grease.
- Now the pedal should spin without friction. They should be some resistance from the grease like liquid.
It’s quite nice to have a pedal which is now spinning properly.
A cheap way to Grease Speedplay
Thanks to Nick, for tip. Use: 3ml syringe
Lubing Pedals
After wet or muddy rides, Speedplay advise adding lube to the pedals. They don’t advise using wet lube like GT-40 because they attract dirt.
They have a specific SP lube – which they say dry quickly. Unlike most speedplay products, it’s not too expensive $6. But, you should get the same results from a similar dry lube.
- Finish Line Dry lube at Wiggle
Lubing Cleats
I find it is less important to lube the cleats, but, if they get stiff or after a very wet series of rides, it’s good to use some lube one the metal clip.
This youtube video does the job.
A little bit of dry lube and you’re done.
Related
- Speedplay long term review
- Speedplay Maintenance at Speedplay.com
Experience and the speedplay tech pages say NOT to remove the
blanking plug – just the screw when injecting the lube. Also to rotate the
pedal as you squirt the lube in to help distribute it !
I think you’re actually supposed to keep the black dust cap on, and squirt it through the little hole, that way you dont get loads of grease coming back at you. I have a Weldtite grease gun which cost me about £6 and another £4 for the grease, much better value than the Speedplay one.
When greasing my Speedplay pedals I use a syringe (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_x1hst38NpA) and don’t remove the plastic casing. The grease still goes through the pedal but doesn’t leak nearly as much.
Thanks for tip Nick. And presumably a syringe is much cheaper than £40 for the speedplay greaser!