Service your Pedals

I wrote in social media at the end of August how I had just bay-serviced a set of four year old XTR pedals. It had been a simple job, the XTR pedals are designed to be pulled apart and serviced with your standard tools. With the tools and lube ready it didn't take longer than twenty minutes. Sweet!

The challenge then was to bring a Deore level set of pedals, a similar vintage to the XTR but with many thousands of hours training and commuting on them, back to life. From what I had read, all bar a few of the SPDs in the range can be serviced the same way I did the XTRs. Here we go.

Most modern SPDs have an Allen Key socket in the spindle, but you can use a pedal spanner or correctly fitting tool to remove the pedal from the crack-arm.

For those with carbon cranks (mostly) you may have a narrow washer between the spindle and crank, check for that when you remove your pedals. The spindles are threaded right on one side and left on the other, this is helpful later too when refitting the serviced pedals.

To remove the spindle from the pedal body, on the XTR use the appropriate fitting spanner, on the pedals shown there is a tool from Shimano to fit the short spline. There should be an arrow to show the tightening direction, to loosen the spline turn in the opposite direction.

Clean the pedal body internals and old grease off the spindle with a clean rag. You may have noticed play in your pedals, with the pedals apart you will notice this play in the open bearing set which enclosed between the nuts on the end of the spindle and metal outer casing covering the bearings.

To remove the play, back the small nut (the lock nut) at the end of the spindle off 1/4 a turn. Then tighten the larger nut up till the bearing outer casing starts to bind. Back the larger nut off slightly so the bearing casing runs smooth and tighten the smaller nut up to the larger, ensure the lock nut is tight.

Half fill the pedal body with quality bearing grease and press the spindle back into the body. In doing so you will be pressing the new grease through the bearing set and forcing the old grease out. Ensure you start the thread and tighten in the appropriate direction. 

As you tighten the old grease and the new grease will pop and squeeze out the tread and axel of the spindle. Clean the grease from the pedal and ensure the spindle in firmly fitted to the body.

Lightly grease the thread of the pedal and refit it to the crank-arm, including washer if previously fitted.

Once you have done both pedals, your ready to ride with your newly serviced pedals.