Kickstarter: The Infinity Pedal Revolutionizes Clipping In

Always good to see another option available, like most things pedals take practice. Until I find something that works better I will stick with my old Time atacs. Great looking design, good luck.

Yes, I like it too. I’d like to se some options with some more foot supports.

Bikerumor. Pledge, get a pair and post a test!

Why is he so bad at getting into “standard” clipless pedals?

Hey, I see you featured them! Good for you guys! However, you MUST note that the author features a Titanium version, and it has an open pledge for it. It will take 299 bucks out of your pocket.

@Bog: I believe the Phillips screw was only featured in the prototypes. The final version will have an Allen screw.

It doesn’t seem to be very secure. Also it has forward-backward play between the shoe and the pedal. And it has a very small float. I’m not sure if it’s a good design.

Is this better than a speedplay frog?

Like Doug b said no platform is kind of scary, guess it’d be fine on fire road and flows single track, I can’t see riding a rocky technical sections.
I like new ideas.

@Ryan totally agree! Not sure how the cavity can clear gunk the first time you step in mud.

Got yourself a new fan!

hate to be the mechanic that has to test ride a bike with these

The engagement rollers appear to be brass. If they are, they will wear out much faster than the steel cleat. That seems to be the wrong way around. It also seems that side load such as a very bumpy corner, an off camber landing, or heavy spinting could open the spring and release the cleat. That literally happens in his video when he lands hard.

Those things are going to clog up at the first hint of dirt mixed with water.
– The back portion of the cleat is a great mud retention mechanism. The pedal rollers won’t engage the tabs if the rollers can’t meet the tabs due to mud clogging the cleat.
– A little bit of mud in the pedal seems like it would easily prevent the spring from compressing enough to engage the the cleat tabs.

Of course, that’s just my opinion, and I could be wrong.

@bazookasean – The pedal rollers appear to be heat treated stainless.
@david – I agree. the cleat would probably hold up better if it were forged (like a speedplay frog cleat)

All in all a cool concept. good job Infinity!

I’ve never had any trouble clipping into my SPD’s… at least not since I wore out my 737’s.

These pedals look cool, but I’m not seeing any obvious advantage over other designs.

I’ve obviously never ridden in them since they are in kickstarter, and would love to have my doubts be disproven by someone who has ridden in them, or by the designer. I am just drawing conclusions from the pretty pictures and the cute video.
Did you happen by any chance to look at those pretty pictures, or watch the cute video as well? He is riding with his toes pointed down in pretty much every segment, and he engages them with his toes pointed down.
It does not take a lot to come to this conclusion, false as I genuinely hope it is, by looking at the cleat design, and the area on the pedal where it interfaces and engages the cleat.

Looks very cool.
But have three doubts:

– Getting stabbed by the pedal during a crash
– How is it going to work in MUD? Once the mud piles up in the cleat, there is no way to get out.
Mud will get stack to the actual pedal as well, besides being very slippery.

Love to see new ideas, and this is kind of cool in it’s own way. There is a very infomercial like overstatement of problems with existing designs though. I don’t need to look at my pedals to get into them, and I don’t remember ever consciously thinking about rotating them; I just stomp on them and wiggle my foot till I feel the click. it doesn’t look like clipping into these is going to be any different.

My main concern is what happens when the cleats wear out and the kickstarter campaign is over but they haven’t gone into production (i.e., replacement cleats aren’t available).

@patrik they’re selling a new style of pedal and trying to get people to buy into it. There’s no way they’re going to start out pushing a 173g pedal – it would either be very unsafe or very expensive.

I agree with most of what Michael said. There are a lot of clever ideas here, but the whole of the product is half-baked. It’s clear that the design hasn’t been tested much and that the designer has little experience with the other pedals that are on the market.

The round profile is elegant, and potentially saves a bit of of weight. It also allows you to clip in from a greater range of vertical angles, but the benefit of this is questionable to anyone with experience with any of the more popular MTB pedal systems out there.

The round profile has several significant disadvantages also. The contact area of the cleat interface is limited by the diameter of the rollers. This makes for a smaller target when clipping in, and requiring a more precise foot angle (horizontal/perpendicular to axle) in order to engage. …something likely to be very noticeable, because the design lacks any self-centering engagement feature. Similarly, the smaller interface means faster wear on both the cleat and the pedal.

A similar design with a 4-sided, square engagement pieces in place of the round rollers would allow for a much larger interface contact area, allowing for a greater adjustment of float, wider range of engagement and longer wear.

This would still have the problem of a lack of self-centering though. It is really much better to have a smaller cleat poking into the middle of a spring trap – the way all of the mainstream clipless pedal systems work – because it allows you to easily add self-centering features to guide the cleat into the pedal. Most pedals offer a “safe clip-in target” that is many times the size of the cleat.

You could add similar centering features to the Infinity design by beveling the edges of the rollers, but this can only increase the size of the clip-in target by the size of the bevel – a few millimeters at most. With this design, the size of the clip-in target will always be limited by the size of the cleat, and can only be increased by shrinking the pedal interface and exacerbating the problems outlined above.

A couple of very light pedals these remind me of:
M2Racer http://www.pezcyclingnews.com/m2-squared-racer/#.Uxrqy-d5PJ4
Ultralite http://gearjunkie.com/ultralite-sports-lightest-clipless-bike-pedal

I’m with everyone on how small that “platform” is. I mean, you are on cylinders, so the surface contact would be quite small I would think. Clipping in on steep, technical, uphill terrain is a PIA even for the most seasoned rider and I usually tell beginners to just get pedaling to gain momentum, then clip in.

Great to see another alternative though, I can see where this would appeal to commuters and urban riders who are constantly putting a foot down.

I just hope it works better than the M2 Racer Ti Pedal!