Performance Bike Recalls Carbon Forte Road Bike Pedals

3 out of 2900??? emmm seems like they are jumping the gun on a recall there..

@anon if it was a derailleur or a headset, I’d say it’s silly. But when it comes to contact points, which take a LOT of pressure and abuse from the rider, this was the only wise decision from them.

If a headset fails, the steerer tube is still trapped inside the head tube and the whole stem assembly is held in place by bolts. So unless you’re descending a very technical stretch of a road with very high speed, most probably nothing serious will happen to you.

I think I would rather have my pedal fail causing my foot to slip or unclip and possibly ruining my rhythm (if It was a mountain bike where I was bombing down some tech stuff standing up, then It would be a different story) than my derailleur break and get sucked into my wheel thus bring my rear end to a screeching halt and ripping my wheel right off it’s hub in the process.

My point being is that is is a quick recovery from a pedal break..probably not much different than your cleat slipping out when you’re really cranking and the tension is set loose. It would be a much quicker recovery than a broken derailleur or even a headset. Sure, your wheel and bars will stay intact but you may have serious speed wobbles or even a locked up steerer, possibly even crack open the head tube on a carbon frame allowing the entire unit to come free from the rest of the bike.

Having had a Crank Bros Candy C pedal axle snap while doing a standing sprint up a short climb on my cross bike on the road at 15-16mph, I can definitely state that you it really hurts when you instantly slam into the pavement due to pedal failure. Think about all that energy and body weight on the downstroke, and then having the axle snap which translates into you going down. Granted that it was the previous gen Candy, but Crank Bros never recalled that pedal even after I researched multiple failures of that same axle for that pedal… and hence the reason why I will never buy Crank Bros anything again. Google “Crank Bros Candy pedal failure”.

So to stay on topic, I think it was prudent and proactive of Performance to recall this pedal as a failure can cause serious injury.