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

1. After 2,000 miles or three months.
2. 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

I was having problem with clamping two components – an AX Lightness stem (26.0mm) and a schmolke handlebar (25.9mm) I assumed that they would go together perfectly fine because they are both the old standard size for handlebars. (Schmolke say the handlebar has a tolerance for a stem 25.8-26.0) However, when I contacted AX lightness, they said no, it has to be exactly 26.0mm- 25.9mm is too small – and also I should have bought their handlebar. It’s annoying because I did want to buy their handlebar, but it was too expensive. Anyway the problem was that no matter how much I tightened the stem, it slipped when riding over a pothole. This is disconcerting and potentially dangerous. In fact I rounded a bolt trying to tighten it up.  I even tried putting a piece of ribbon between handlebar and stem to create more width, but it didn’t feel very satisfactory.

before torque paste

I took the bike to Beeline bicycles on Cowley Road; they have a new road bike shop and are very helpful. The manager gave me some torque paste and suggested that would help. They also kindly gave me some single chain ring bolts, for national hill climb championship bike conversion. Good old local bike shops.

Applying Paste

The paste is pretty easy to apply just put on the area you want to clamp. You don’t need a lot – a thin smearing is enough. In this case I put it on between handlebar and stem. Then tighten as usual. Hopefully, you will notice a better clamping action.

This was very good for my need. It helped compensate for that 0.1mm difference between stem and handlebars, and is a low cost solution. So far, I’ve not had any slippage and it feels stronger than previously.

Another advantage of the grease is that it should prevent two different components fusing together. It’s a nice combination – grease to prevent fusion. Ball bearings to increase friction. BTW: you can’t really see the ball bearings.

It may also be good if you have creaking, a bit of this grease should help to reduce that noise of metal on metal.

You can apply paste to aluminium and carbon fibre. Good places that spring to mind include

• Handlebar stem
• Stem – steerer tube on fork
• Seat seat post.

Ritchley’s torque grease say that it can reduce the necessary torque by upto 30%. I don’t know if you would want to reduce torque by that much. But, it will give a better grip and you may feel it is sufficiently tight earlier.

Overall

An excellent little product. For those who don’t use torque wrenches, this will give greater piece of mind that your clamping is strong. For fiddly, expensive lightweight components that have a lower tolerance of incorrect fitting and tightening  torque paste makes a big difference to helping create a successful paste. I wish I’d know about it earlier. It would have saved quite a bit of bike maintenance problems. At £3-£5 you can’t go wrong.

Ritchley Liquid Torque

• Ritchley Liquid Torque only  £3.08 at Wiggle

It’s easy to take the approach to bike maintenance of riding the bike until it doesn’t work (in this case, chain starts slipping). Then try and fix it yourself  or take to shop. For my commuting bike, this is often my attitude. I often just ride it until my chain starts slipping. Then I know that the chain and cassette will probably need changing together. With my commuting bike,  I tend to buy the cheapest chains and cheapest cassette blocks.  Sometimes, you need to change the outer chain ring as well.

However, for a road bike, with more expensive cassettes and groupsets, it is worth being more careful and changing  chains, cassettes and chainrings before it is too late. Optimal changes can:

• Save money (in particular prolong life of cassettes)
• Increase power transfer – lose less power to stretched chains and bigger gaps in cassette teeth.

If Pedal Slips when Pedalling it most likely to be a worn chain and cassette, though it could also be:

1. Worn freewheel hub
2. stiff chain link

When to Change Chain?

A simple test is to put the bike in your biggest gear (i.e. biggest chain ring at fron, smallest rear cassette spoke, e.g. 53*12).

Worn chain can stretch away from outer chain ring

Then pull the chain away from the chainring. If there is a big gap (like above),  then the chain should be changed.

You can also use the 1) ruler method or 2) buy a specific chain tool. See: How often to change chain? for more details

Does Your Cassette Need Changing?

If you change your chain regularly, e.g. every 1,500Km – you won’t always need to change your cassette at the same time. With proper management, you can manage to have 3-4 different chains on the same cassette block. With regular chain changes, your cassette blocks last longer. If you are using top end Campag Record or Dura Ace, it obviously become more important to change chain regularly.

However, if the chain is run into the ground, and you change after say 4-5,000Km – when it starts to slip. You will probably need to change cassette as well.

How to Spot a Worn Cassette

1. Chain slips when pressure is applied. A simple test, is simply to ride the bike with new chain. If the chain, slips it will be almost certainly because the cassette needs changing. If you want to save money, you can try riding through this ‘slipping period’ it may bed down and stop slipping after a while. However, if you want optimal performance, change your casssette.

A Worn Cassette – note more pointy teeth.

2. Cassette Teeth become like hooks, with bigger gaps between the teeth (see above).

New cassette

Personally, I often find it difficult to spot a mildly worn cassette. I’ve often spent quite a while looking at cassettes trying to work out if they are worn / partially worn or not. I have about 3-4 cassettes lying around my garage in a state of partial wear. Not being used, but not being thrown away….

How To Spot a Worn Chain Rings

Worn Chain ring on top. New chain ring underneath.

Chain rings generally survive longer than cassettes. Even if you need to change chain and rear cassette, it may be fine to keep your existing chainrings.

To test whether you need to change your chain ring, it is the same as for cassette.

1. Is there slippage when riding?
2. Do the teeth look more like hooks, with bigger gaps?

It is not always easy to know whether chain rings and cassettes need changing. I often end up looking at different bikes and trying to compare the shape of the cassette teeth. There isn’t an easy scientific test. It’s also more difficult because even if it doesn’t slip, I still don’t want to be losing power on my racing bikes.

Overall

• Regularly check chain tension and chain length. Changing regularly will help prolong life of your cassettes and chainrings. It is better to buy several cheaper chains then try make your Dura Ace chain last a long time.
• I was a bit annoyed I had let my chain on my Time trial bike (photo above) get so stretched.
• Have a look at shape of teeth. When they start to become like hooks, they will need changing.
• Chainrings need changing less frequently.
• If you ride with worn chain rings and cassettes, you will lose power transfer and could even start slipping on the pedals.

Related

• Chains and drivetrains at Wiggle Cycles
• How to change rear cassette

But, alas, life is not so straightforward, not only do we cyclists have to train through wind, rain and sleet, not only do we have to learn the art of staying alive on British roads, but we also have to learn the intricacies and challenges of bike maintenance. Give me a 25% hill and I’ll cycle up it all day long, but give me a Shimano Dura Ace 10 speed group set, and, for the life of me, I will never be able to remember whether tightening up the front chainring position is anti-clockwise or clockwise.

Instead, I will mindlessly keep turning the screw in all different directions until by a random chance of fate, it aligns perfectly. Although usually, I’ve given up and taken to a bike shop long before I’ve finished the said messing around with screwdriver.

Over the past 20 years of cycling, I’ve become a reasonable descender, a competent timetriallist, and a pretty good hill climber. But, whilst my cycling capacity has risen from rank beginner to good amateur, my bike maintenance capacity is languishing in the ‘might be able to manage 10 miles, if the weather is nice’ kind of category. (i.e. he can change a puncture, so long as the tyre is sufficiently pliant and malleable.)

Nevertheless, despite years of frustration, broken allen keys and gear shifters which resolutely fail to shift, I still have some wisdom to pass onto those who find themselves in a similar situation.

One word of warning, listening to advice from me on bike maintenance is not entirely dissimilar to listening to advice from George Bush on the intricacies of Keynesian economics. But, the internet has never really suffered from another useless piece of advice, so here I go.

• Your best bet is often to take it to a bike shop. You will save yourself time, money and you won’t have a large dint in your carbon fibre frame because you hit it with a spanner in frustration. Now, this is not exactly scintillating advice – but, it’s always been my great saviour. No matter, what you start, you know that when you fail to finish it, you can always take down to bike shop. In 20 years, only once have I felt bike repair was expensive; often it’s embarrassingly cheap – at least compared to motor car maintenance, which seem to have a £30 minimum charge for turning up at the garage.
• No matter how many times you read the manual, you will still end up changing your gears and brakes by guess work. This involves prolonged amounts of fiddling, testing, and going back to change it. Sometimes, after 2 days of failed attempts to adjust gears, you realise actually you need to get a new cassette and chain.
• A surprisingly large percentage of all my successful bike repair operations have involved the use of superglue, but never in any single book on bike maintenance as anyone, ever, suggested using superglue. Either I have a secret no-one else has thought of – or more likely my bike will one day unceremoniously fall apart.
• The noise o meter. How loud does that annoying noise on your bike have to be before you attempt to fix it? i.e. which is greater – the irritation of the noise or the dread of trying to locate the noise and fix it without making it worse. I have developed a high noise tolerance. This tolerance of squeaks and noises solves many bike maintenance problems.

• Unbelievably there have been times when I have been able to fix a problem that the bike shop hasn’t. Take speedplay pedals. Most bike shops don’t deal with speedplay pedals, but at £150 a pair, you can’t just sling them in the bin, and reorder on Wiggle. To my great pride, I learnt how to grease speedplay pedals. This is my greatest bike maintenance triumph (though I did get a big blob of grease on my living room carpet as testimony to this success) – I still feel this is more deserving of a trophy than 1st place in Wobbly Wheelers 10 Mile TT, but I shall have to live with this triumph in silence.
• I don’t advise bike maintenance in the living room whilst watching TV. It’s one thing to keep a bike in the house, but bike maintenance is not entirely suited to a pale yellow carpet.
• Cheap Tools are a False economy. Cycling is unbelievably cheap, but it hasn’t stopped me trying to fix a £5,000 bike with a set of cheap allen keys costing 99p from the local pound shop. So much needless frustration from using cheap, rubbish tools!
• Missing Parts. An amazing thing about bike maintenance, is that whatever task you are involved in, some key piece will mysteriously disappear and get lost during the process of maintenance. You will find this later (when you have bought a replacement at a ridiculous price), this key part will probably have moved itself to that space in your workshop / garage called – random bike parts. This box has laws of its own.

• It always gets bigger with an ever increasing quantity and variety of miscellaneous bike parts.
• You never use anything in this box
• You never can throw out anything from this box, because although you don’t know what their purpose is, you can’t bring yourself to throw it out because they cost you a lot of money!

• If all else fails buy a new bike. Now this is probably one of the weakest reasons to buy a new bike. But, if you’re desperate for an excuse to buy a new single speed bike, you could try this – ‘well, at least I won’t have to adjust the gears!’

Well, I could keep on going giving pearls of bike maintenance wisdom, but I don’t want to overload you with too many essential facts and figures. Just remember if you speak nicely to your bicycle it will be much easier to adjust those gears

Related

• Bike Maintenance for beginners

The essential thing is to keep your chain and rear cassette well oiled during this salty season. Even one ride in salty water can change your chain and cassette to a nice shade of orange; it is very corrosive for bikes.

Spraying with GT -85 spray will help keep the salty water away from the chain and prevent corrosion. I spray some GT-85, whenever it is wet and salty, either before or after. Keep away from brake blocks, but it can be used elsewhere on the bike to help clean and displace water. (- also makes a very good bike frame polisher)

I also use a heavy duty winter lube, at a period of about once a week. This Finish Line wet lubricant (green bottle) seems as good as any. It comes out in a foam and is said to help maintain the chain for a longer period. With so many variables, it is hard to judge how effective it has been in terms of chain length. But, it feels better than doing nothing and the chain runs nice and smooth.

After years of use, my rear dérailleur has broken. I could replace it, but I might as well wait for the salt on road season to finish. April is a good time to see if your chain and cassette need replacing. No point putting a new chain on at this time, if you can make it last until the spring.

Other Jobs Worth Doing

Greasing components like Pedals

On my winter training bike, my speedplay pedals got stuck to the cranks. I couldn’t remove them with an ordinary spanner. I had to take them to a bike shop, where they used a special lock spanner to remove them. However, they had to use so much force that the pedals were slightly squashed where the spanner turns.

The solution to this is to take off the pedals and place some grease on the spindles, this helps to prevent salt getting in and fixing the spindle to the crank. Other joints like brakes and bottom brackets will benefit from greasing. Though be wary, you are not supposed to grease carbon components.

Don’t Forget Your Lock.

Don’t forget to spray your lock. Otherwise it can become very tight and worse become impossible to budge. A quick spray of GT-85 will help keep rust at bay.

Washing Your Bike

My winter training bike.
If you are very good, with much free time, you will wash your bike after every ride. In practise, I don’ get around to this in winter. Fortunately, I can dedicate a winter bike to getting trashed. I will replace the chain and other components with bottom of the range components. If you have just bought a brand new bike, try to resist the temptation to ride it on every winter training ride. It may help show off on winter rides, but you’d be better off keeping it for better rides. My Trek Madone is safely in the loft.

Check Brake Blocks

At this time of the year, brake blocks can go down pretty quick so might need changing..

Related

• Cleaning your bike
• How often to change chain on bike

On Tuesday, I wrote a post about bad luck with punctures.. As I said in the post, I was rather proud to have only 1 puncture in the past two years since using Armadillo tyres. Of course, after writing such a post and singing the praises of Armadillo’s, you have to expect the inevitable puncture, which happened that very same day – late on Tuesday night. I could ride the first 1.5 mile on a flattish tyre (20 psi) but, by half way home the air had all vanished so it was a long walk home.

Over two years, the puncture rate is still pretty good so I’m still happy with Armadillos. But, I will be more wary about writing about luck and punctures…

A few readers have left helpful comments on the post – bad luck with punctures. e.g. check rim and spoke for causing repeat puncutres.

One reader asked about a recommended puncture resistant Mountain bike tyre. My experience is that cheap mountain bike tyres seem to attract more punctures. Partly this may be the wider size giving more chance of picking up a thorn and the nature of MTB riding. But, there should be no reason why MTB tyres are more liable to punctures. Basically, if you buy a cheap MTB, they will keep price low by fitting with cheap, thin tyres. One of the best upgrades to any MTB is to get something like these

• Marathon Plus Smartguard MTB Tyres

Whatever tyre you chose, these Green slime self healing MTB inner tubes looked promising as an inner tube. My own experience was not encouraging, but, you can’t base an overall review on such a short experience.

As an alternative, you could try this liner, which goes between tyre and inner tube – Zefal inner liner at Wiggle.

For the average cycle user, the costs of punctures are much greater than the very small decline in performance from slightly heavier / greater rolling resistance of better puncture resistance.

Related

• Best Puncture proof tyres

Readers Question: hi there my partner has a kraken carrera mountain bike and has over five punctures in last three weeks and is ready to throw it out, he went to two different bike shops in south lanarkshire scotland uk and they fitted new tubing, new tire etc and still no joy and had puncture day after it was fixed! i have tried taking the tire off but have no tools and the tire seems very very tight even tho its flat as anything any help please please

I’ve had a similar experience with my Apollo Mountain Bike. I rode it for a few weeks no problems. But, when I lent it to my lodger he got three punctures in the rear tyre in space of a week. I got fed up with mending my own bike, so bought one of these slime green inner tube which is supposed to not get punctures. But, after one week, he’d had another puncture in the same rear wheel tyre. I can’t work out why the bike got so many punctures. I think it was just partly bad luck.

Punctures may be more common if:

• You put them on wrongly. i.e. if you pinch the inner tube between rim and wheel. See: Avoid pinching tyre
• You leave sharp things in tyre. Check for things stuck in tyre.

You can reduce punctures if you:

• Buy best quality puncture resistant tyres. see: best puncture resistant tyres
  Avoid wet gravelly roads
• See: Tips for avoiding punctures

On some bikes I can cycle 3,000 miles without punctures. But, when I go on one cycle path near Oxford, when its wet I always seem to get a puncture because of all the grit and gravel on the path.

Dealing with Stiff Tyres

I’ve had many frustrating experiences with stiff tyres. I often use three tyre leavers to help get it off. But, after using tyre leavers I half inflate tyre then double check there is no inner tube stuck between rim and tyre.

It would be a great shame to give up cycling because of frequent punctures. It can just be bad luck. But, if you get right tyre and put it on properly, punctures really aren’t such a pain.

Related

• Tips for mending a puncture
• Puncture Repair at Evans

Video – how not to put on a tyre

I’ve been using some simple clip on mudguards for quite a few years. But, was intrigued to see the design of these crud Road racer mudguards which have a much more extensive coverage around the wheel. Important if you are on a club run with lots of riding close to other riders.

In theory, fitting should be fairly straightforward. There are also tutorials at the Crud site here

However, I found it difficult to work out where things went and also to prevent the mudguard rubbing against the tyre. As you can see the mudguard is very close to top of back tyre. When you ride on gravelly roads, gravel can get caught between the mudguard and wheel making an irritating crunching sound.

I tried a few times to lift up the mudguard higher from wheel, but always struggled to get it right.

It’s probably just me as many other people seem to be able to use them fine and they have had good reviews. I’ve always struggled with mudguards for some reason

But, personally, I will prefer the clip on SKS race blades which are much easier to get clearance from tyre and incredibly easy to take on or off.

However, if you are wanting a comprehensive mudguard clearance, and have patience to fit. These Crud probably offer a good choice for road bikes with tight clearance.

Related

• Best Mudguards
• Mudguards at Evans Cycles

This is my collection of tools, spare parts, random clothes and other things that are vaguely to do with bikes and have been lying around for years. You can tell how long someone has been cycling for the amount of cycling junk they have accumulated. Amongst here are so many nuts and bolts I’ve completely forgotten what they were used for, but, you dare not throw them away.

Ideally, this would be my entire bike part / tool shed but it’s actually spread out to three different locations (and probably loft as well) so it’s even harder to find what you want.

As you can see I do go through periods of organising vigour. In particular I love putting nails in walls to hang tools on.

I’ve always been a bit useless at bike maintenance. I tend to take it in to a bike shop for anything serious. However, the last occasion cost me £180, and they put on a chain that was too short. I had to take it off and put a new one. I should have taken it back and complained but I’m too British to get worked up and actually complain.

The tool shed is a collection of former parts that never quite made it. I have about six cycle computers in various states of comprehensiveness. I made a rash choice in buying two Cateye Vectra 5 function (with no time). They are useless for what I want and failed to sell them on ebay. I also have about six pairs of time trial oversocks. The thing about oversocks is that they look good (and maybe even save you the odd second) but, if you wear them on more than one occasion they will develop holes in the soles. So I keep buying new ones, but, can’t bring myself to throw away the old ones. You just never know when you might need a thin pair of oversocks with holes in…

Note the scales for weighing bike components. When building a hill climb bike, you like to know the weight of bike components. For some reason, bike manufacturers are reluctant to display weights (when it is something everyone wants to know) and if they do publish weights it often is wrong. I don’t know why they have collective amnesia in this. Anyway, you can use these scales to see how many grams are lost by shaving the length of brake block to be shorter. (I kid you not, and it was 2 grams if you are interested)

The most useful tool is always superglue. You can fix 50% of household maintenance problems with superglue, and it’s pretty useful for the bike and components too.

Two things that take up a lot of space here are two heavy waterproof / goretex style jackets. They are pretty good at keeping the water out. But, if you cycle over 50% of your heart rate, you will sweat like the proverbial pig, so I never actually use them. But, because you spend £80 on them, you can’t throw them away.

Anybody want some aluminium tribars heavily cut down for standard size handlebars.

Related

• Bike Maintenance for beginners

After three quick punctures in succession, my mountain bike was hanging around the garage, looking pretty sorry for itself, my lodger lost all inspiration in putting another inner tube in. After a puncture rate of about 1 per 5 miles, he’d resorted to using the bus and running home. I had repaired the punctures so I didn’t think it was a pinch flat from poor repairing. I blamed the cheap thin tyres (the bike did only cost £89). Anyway, I wanted to see it fixed, so when I saw some Green slime inner tubes on sale, I thought I’d give it a go. It was double the price of an inner tube, but, if it does really work, it would be worth it – the main pain is not so much the cost, but the time taken to change it on this mountain bike.

The inner tube works, by automatically releasing a green slime to fix any piercing of tube by things like thorns, sharp glass e.t.c. I must admit I find it hard to picture how it actually works, but, it does! When you get a puncture, like a thorn, there is a hissing sound, but spin the wheel round a few times and it is fixed. The tube is obviously a bit heavier than a normal inner tube, I wouldn’t be wanting it in my road bikes (as far as I can see it’s not available anyway). But, when you have a cheap, heavy mountain bike, an extra 100grams in the inner tube is hardly going to be noticed. I also didn’t notice any difference in ride quality after fixing inner tube. – the mtb was still slow and heavy! making me grateful, fast road bikes have been invented.

Rather surprisingly on the packet it said it didn’t work for pinch flats – that’s a pain because a high % of punctures are pinch flats. Anyway, so far it is great. Also there is the peace of mind of not being stranded in the centre of town, and have to walk it back.

Recommended. As long as you know how to properly put in an inner tube – i.e without creating pinch flats (this took me about seven years of cycling to master) It is a good investment. At double the price of a standard tube, even one puncture would mean it more than pays for itself. Great for those who hate anything bike maintenance related. Unless you race around town, you probably won’t notice any difference in bike performance.

• Green slime self healing inner tubes at Wiggle
• Tips for avoiding punctures