Remind me again, why do we bother with SPD-SL pedals, the plastic of which wears regularly and needs replacing? The bottom of decent SPD-cleated shoes is solid and one cannot feel the interface just by wearing them. Is it just to "fit with the racing crowd"? Understood that one has to be cautious damaging hardwood floors, and slipping and falling when walking with exposed SPD cleats, but on the assumption either way that walking is minimal, why are we not just using SPD cleats + 1-pair of shoes?

I meant the plastic on the cleats wears..., not the pedals

yep - the three bolt plastic road cleat is stupid regardless of which tech it is.

But the stiff sole is "better power transfer"

so the racers will stick with it

2 bolt MTB cleats are better, but they generally use a flexible shoe sole

@Sam7919 3 bolt style is more comfortable (and maybe healthier) because there is no tilting

and floats freely

you are not supposed to walk in them

@Criggie "Generally" doesn't mean that there are no rigid shoes available with SPD (cross country and gravel shoes are rigid), you still have the possibility to choose the shoes you buy ;)

I have some pretty stiff SPD shoes but I can walk in them fine

@Michael except speed play discs, do any eyes cleats have as much float (rotation yaw axis) as SPD?

Toe cages have huge float. But they;re not cleats.

One advantage of SPD is slightly wider Q. However, there aren't pedals with longer axes, unlike some road pedals.

@Criggie flat pedals too...

Modern flat pedals are really good by the way.

@gschenk the problem is that SPD has play in every direction

my Look Keos allow for some nice left-right rotation (float) but are otherwise super stable

Look Quartz are some nice 2 bolt pedals when your shoes are new. Once the sole starts to wear they also develop a lot of play :(

Speedplay Zero is also great while on the bike, especially because you have an adjustable, hard stop to internal rotation to avoid hitting crankarms with your heels

@Criggie My first shoes were 2-bolt with a carbon sole. Worked fine for me. I am still confused by the "contact area" argument for 3-bolt shoes.

In my experience, the majority of arguments in cycling are a mix of yesteryears marketing blurbs, sadistic traditions, and half understood physics.

and "it's aero!!!"

And rhymes such as "steel is reel"

@Michael shouldn't you be fixed by increasing spacing between pedals (Q)? Forcing feet to point forward during the pedal stroke seems to me a recipe to destroy lots of knees.

@Erlkoenig my most hated:

* pedal over spindle

* your seat is too low!

tbf I see some people with seats so low that their knees bump their elbows.

* ball over bearing (of foot and pedal, respectively)

@Michaelcomelately there's a tendency to persuade riders to go from too low to way too high.

So float is pretty much it. Cool, except that from November until now I've been riding my road bike with SPD pedals and SPD shoes. Most often what snow did fall melted quickly and the roads were clear. It would have been stupid to go riding on studded tires and MTB/fatbike. A road bike was plenty enough, but rather than solve the my-feet-are-freezing problem, I simply wore winter boots with SPD cleats and switched the pedals on the road bike. I can't say that at any time I missed the float.

@Sam7919 I don't get your argument. SPD have a lots of float.

@gschenk Lol.. Then that must be why I'm not missing it.

From what I've heard, SPD-SL has less tilting freeplay than SPD

Since the contact areas are large rectangles instead of tiny points like with SPD

Granted the only time I've ever tried was SPD-SL was with a friend's bike and (4 sizes too big) shoes...

Pitch-axis free play? I guess technically that could be true, but that's also the axis that pedals tilt, so I'd expect the pedal to rock more than the cleat.

The Real Engineers can comment further, but I imagine the difference is just how much torque you need on the shoe bolts. To keep the 2-bolt plate inside the shoe from sliding, I'm already cranking those things way down.

I don't know if how much real effect it has, but I can definitely understand the arguments in favour of SPD-SL. In comparison to no moving parts and a single contact surface, SPD has 4 contact points, 2 moving, and 2 springs (with independent tension adjustments) per pedal.

In order to dial in the amount of float you need to fiddle with 4 tension screws, instead of just changing cleats. And there's a lower limit to the amount of float, plus increasing the tension makes it harder to clip in.

Not to mention that, while quite minor, the metal-on-metal contact means that the pedals themselves experience wear (even assuming you manage to keep the springs clean and dry so they don't rust, which can be quite a chore).

(And if you're a real weight weenie, it's easier to make the SPD-SL pedal+cleat to be lighter than an equivalent SPD pedal+cleat.)

FWIW, I have SPD on my commuter and touring bikes and SPD-SL on my road bike.

(Not by deliberate choice, that's the way they came and I've never felt the need to change.)

How not to rebuild an e-bike battery 😱

@Michaelcomelately Nah, I was thinking of the roll axis.

And while you're probably right that the absolute torque is a consideration, I think a more significant factor if we are looking at the shoe-to-cleat interface is that something held down with 2 bolts (in a line) is more likely to pivot than something held down with 3 in a triangle

Actually the even bigger outcome of that is stiffness I think. 3-bolt cleats are quite big relative to the shoe, and you get a sort of I-beam effect

whereas 2-bolt cleats contribute almost nothing to the shoe stiffness

@DavidW SPD-SL still has an adjustable sprung pivot in the rear no?

@Erlkoenig eeek