Should I Buy A Pedal Wrench?

[Urbancowboy]

My neighbor's then 6 month-old Aventon Level.2 had a stock pedal that his ParkTool pedal wrench couldn't budge — even with both of us pulling at once. Salvaged some pride when the LBS couldn't get it off, either.

Ended up replacing the attached crank just to try some new pedals. Fortunately, not too expensive as bike modification adventures go.

Sized up Bolts and such can be made to release by putting some Heat to it. An ordinary Propane Torch will do, the heat from a cutting Torch works much faster.
Cheers

 

[Chargeride]

I love the anti seize grease advice.

Bit late for that innit.

 

[il Munduato]

Sized up Bolts and such can be made to release by putting some Heat to it. An ordinary Propane Torch will do, the heat from a cutting Torch works much faster.
Cheers

Really not a good option without possibility damaging things in the process.
But a heat gun and some penetration oil has yet to let me down... and with some patience.

Being able to do things that an LBS isn't capable of... well that's not saying much.

 

[PCeBiker]

I love the anti seize grease advice.

Bit late for that innit.

No, you're right on time.
I bought myself a brand new can of anti-seize !!
It comes in a plastic bottle now.

That's the 15 mm wrench that came with my e-bike to attach the pedals.

The Wellgo pedals are different than what I was familiar with. The pedal has clearance for a regular "thick" wrench, and it's hex shaped.

Some of the old school pedals didn't have enough clearance for a fat wrench and only had two sides/slots for the wrench.

I like seeing the bit of rust on the axle flats. That's means it's good old school Hardened Steel.
There's anti-seize on the threads though so there's no rust seizing it to my crank arm.

 

[PCeBiker]

I've never had an issue just using grease.
A pedal isn't subject to high temperatures or extreme pressures.

I've got grease coming out the yin-yang including the fancy $50 airplane grease, but I'm going to keep using the anti-seize for everything with threads.

I do treat my bicycle a little better than a rented mule so again. . . ymmv

Using anti-seize is part of treating things better.

 

[PCeBiker]

A pedal isn't subject to high temperatures or extreme pressures.

Sure it is.
Every pedal stroke is tightening the threads. Same deal with unthreading your freewheel.

They have Tremendous Pressure on them.

 

[il Munduato]

I've got grease coming out the yin-yang including the fancy $50 airplane grease, but I'm going to keep using the anti-seize for everything with threads.

View attachment 185871




Using anti-seize is part of treating things better.

Sure... But most any grease will work so I opt to not have 20 different specific ones for tasks that just don't require it.
Again, never had an issue.

Sure it is.
Every pedal stroke is tightening the threads. Same deal with unthreading your freewheel.

They have Tremendous Pressure on them.

Ahhh no..
The pressures and temperatures being referenced on the product description are automotive braking and spark plug/engine related....
If you think your pedals are under the same extremes, you're fat

 

[PCeBiker]

I don't pedal, so my entire drive chain is just an ornament and a legality.

I've been thinking of rotating a crank arm 180° to use the pedals properly as foot pegs.

My handlebars are pretty much useless too, but I gotta put the brake levers somewhere.
Maybe foot operated brakes?

 

[m@Robertson]

Using anti-seize is part of treating things better.

Exact same thing goes for pedal washers. That reference that was linked a few posts back is spot on.

Pedal threads btw are 9/16" almost always, except for some rare-ish cruiser bikes that are I think 1/2". 9/16" sizing persists on bikes that have been metric all over for like what? 100 years? But they are.

Pedal washers are a unique, narrow outside diameter that is pretty much guaranteed to fit into the available area on a crankarm, and match the outside diameter of the base of the pedal where the wrench flats are. Not the case with normal washers.

 

[spokewrench]

Sure it is.
Every pedal stroke is tightening the threads. Same deal with unthreading your freewheel.

They have Tremendous Pressure on them.

I had the opposite problem, not with a pedal but with the left crank arm. I'd use Permatex Screw Glue and torque the bolt to specs, but in a day or so the crank arm would wobble and I'd tighten the bolt again. Replacing the crank arm seemed to solve the problem, but it recurred months later. It had to be the bolt. A caliper showed that the threads had the same diameter as a new bolt, but the old threads didn't look quite right, and a new bolt solved the problem.

 

[JoeDirt]

Let's not forget that easy mistake that we often make is that one pedal is French threaded or reverse thread! meaning it's the opposite then you would normally unscrew a pedal. Just thought I'd throw that in. Oh on topic I just use a park Tool Molly grease it's the blue stuff for pretty much all the Fasteners on my bikes and if it's carbon to carbon I use a fiber grip carbon gel. That's absolutely needed for carbon to carbon or they will definitely slip.
Oh and definitely have a narrow spanner wrench to accommodate pedals.

Just my two cents

 

[PCeBiker]

I had the opposite problem, not with a pedal but with the left crank arm.

I had the same problem on my Raleigh 10-speed in the 80's. By the time I tightened the nut the square hole in the crank arm was rounded out so I bought a new crank arm.

The new crank arm had the square axle hole but it wasn't tapered like my axle, so it would only fit on part way.

So, to make it fit, I ground the taper out of the axle with a bench grinder, and managed to get the crank arm on the axle, but of course I took too much off and it wobbled.

Normally I'm OK with "good enough" and that wasn't good enough, but I just put up with the damn wobbly crank arm.

I didn't want to replace the axle and crank arm, and probably the chain rings which would probably be seized on the other end of the axle and I'd wreck it trying to get it off.

I didn't know about crank arm pullers at the time.
I thought that the threaded part of the crank arm was only to screw on the little hub cap that covered up the crank nut underneath.

 

[Mr. Coffee]

Only pedal wrench I've ever needed (glove for scale):

A pet peeve I've always had is that even though a lot of multi-tools include an 8mm hex key, almost all of them tell you that you shouldn't use that for cracking pedals. My question has always been, where else would you use an 8mm hex key on a bike?

My Silca ratchet set doesn't include an 8mm, which is a pretty strong hint that it isn't meant for cracking a pedal.

 

[PCeBiker]

My question has always been, where else would you use an 8mm hex key on a bike?

My crank bolts are 8mm,..

There is no torque spec on the crank bolts, but the pedals (that use regular wrench) torque to 35 NM, so I hooked up my Crank Brothers tool to my torque wrench and reefed on the tool to 35 NM to see what it feels like and test the tool.

The tool was fine at that torque, but it hurt like hell, and left a big red dent in my palm that lasted a couple hours.

 

[spokewrench]

I had the same problem on my Raleigh 10-speed in the 80's. By the time I tightened the nut the square hole in the crank arm was rounded out so I bought a new crank arm.

The new crank arm had the square axle hole but it wasn't tapered like my axle, so it would only fit on part way.

So, to make it fit, I ground the taper out of the axle with a bench grinder, and managed to get the crank arm on the axle, but of course I took too much off and it wobbled.

In my case, I looked into the hole in the crank arm, and it looked poorly milled. I filed it for a better fit. After tightening, I'd estimate the mm between the crank arm and the BB shell. Each time it started to wobble, that distance had increased several mm. It finally dawned on me that the bolt was turning.

The crank arms I've seen lately seem like soft alloys. Maybe torquing is supposed to force them to take on the taper of the BB, for a perfect fit.

 

[PCeBiker]

The crank arms I've seen lately seem like soft alloys. Maybe torquing is supposed to force them to take on the taper of the BB, for a perfect fit.

There was both types of axle at the time.
I had to do quite a bit of searching, but I found a picture of an old-school square non-tapered axle,..

It might have had something to do with my bike being a Raleigh?
I remember it had 700C tires and I was used to the domestic 27" tires.
When I first got the bike I wanted to check the air pressure and didn't know WTF I was looking at.
I had to go back to the bike shop where they told me it was a Presta valve and gave me a screw on adapter.

Maybe the domestic cranks weren't tapered?
I remember that I didn't replace the crank arm with a Raleigh arm.

 

[PCeBiker]

is there an advantage to the presta fittings?

What I liked about them was they were threaded with a locking ring/nut so the valve didn't push in when you pushed the air pump quick release valve on.
(Thread-on pump valves lose to much air when you unthread them)

I liked how you can crank the valve closed tightly by tightening the top of the valve.
Shrader valves use a spring (as well as the air pressure) to hold the valve closed.

They are a smaller diameter so a smaller hole in your rim.

Schrader valves have a removable valve core though, so you can replace it if it fails, and I could remove mine to add the Flat-out through the bigger hole.
Flat-out is as thick as pudding, so I don't think you could squeeze it past a Presta valve where the valve core isn't removable?

Schrader valves usually wobble a little in the rim hole, so you can tell if your tube is lined up properly with the rim hole when the valve is standing straight without leaning over.

 

[il Munduato]

Presta SUCK!

 

[PCeBiker]

Presta SUCK!

Yeah, threaded Schrader valves are nice. I've never actually had one on a tube before. (I think my dirt bike had them, but I'm not sure?)

I actually managed to thread a thin nut from a lamp shade or something onto my rubber Schrader valve once.
It was just the right diameter to bind on the rubber and thread itself down to the rim to hold the valve stem.

 

[Stefan Mikes]

Presta SUCK

Only you won't find Schrader on premium bikes