Wolf Tooth Components makes a huge range of products, and we cover them quite frequently here on BikeRumor. When we do, we often write things like “thoughtfully designed” or “precision machining.” But beyond the words on the screen, what does that actually mean or look like? Turns out, the folks at Wolf Tooth want to give everyone a look behind the curtain, and they’re doing it with a video detailing the development of their new clipless pedal lineup, which launched last October.
I’ve tried all of Wolf Tooth’s new pedals, and they are really, really good. Not only is the machining and finish quality excellent, but the SPD binding mechanism is the smoothest and most refined that I’ve used in 30+ years of riding clipless pedals. After watching CTRL + ALT + DEL: How Wolf Tooth Rebooted Clipless Pedals, it became a little clearer to me why that is. But don’t take my word for it. If you’ve got six minutes to spare, it’s worth a watch.
From Wolf Tooth:
“The product development crew here at Wolf Tooth have a lot of miles on clipless pedals. Like really a lot – easily 200,000+ miles and 60+ years of cumulative riding experience. We have ridden clipless pedals in every possible condition, from the worst mud and snow to the driest and rockiest deserts, through a few thousand races and countless miles of singletrack and gravel. We have also ridden just about every binding system and pedal brand. When we started scoping our own clipless pedal project, one thing that became apparent was that no one was making the pedals we wanted to ride. Every other brand/design had compromises and was leaving important opportunities on the table. We set out to design and build the perfect clipless pedal family – something that would outperform every other clipless pedal in the areas that we found to be most important.“
“The first and perhaps easiest decision was going with an SPD-compatible binding/cleat. Many of the other systems work well, but none of them can match a properly designed SPD-compatible system for overall feel, reliability, and size/profile. It’s also hard to argue with the numbers; there are more riders with SPD cleats on their shoes than any other type. With so many other opportunities to improve, it wouldn’t make sense to invent yet another binding system just to be different. We wanted to make better pedals, not just different pedals.”
“We started this project over two years ago and have invested countless hours of design and testing time with dozens of different pedal body, binding, and cleat designs carefully tested and optimized both in the lab and on the trail. We even designed two custom test machines to enable us to compare and improve our binding system relative to other brands.”
“This realization sparked our mission: to design and build the perfect clipless pedal family, one that would consistently outperform all others in the areas we identified as most crucial. Clipless pedals needed a reboot.“
