I am newer to cycling and need some pedal advice. I have been training with power indoors and want to get power for my outdoor rides. I have a road and a gravel bike and ride both regularly. My road bike has Look Keo pedals and my gravel bike has Shimano xc mountain bike pedals. If I want to get pedals that possibly work for both bikes, would I go with road or mountain pedals? I’ve been looking at the Garmin rally pedals but unsure of which model to get.
I believe the appeal of Rally pedals is you can fit the power sensing spindle to whatever Shimano pedal type you are using:
I would go with the mtb type given the amount of dusmounting I do on the gravel bike rides. That would be a pain with keos and they’d be constantly full of mud at best.
Garmin rally pedals you can change the body to use either Look or MTB pedals, but works out quite expensive to buy the pedals and then an extra body and if you’re switching between bikes regularly it’s probably quite a PITA changing the bodies the whole time. What crank are you using on the bikes? 2 crank-based power meters might well work out at similar cost to having Rallies with 2 bodies, and with much less hassle
2 Likes
Those are the ones if you want an “off the shelf” power pedal - you will be wanting the XC version that takes the SPD cleats you will have in your gravel shoes.
You can either use them as-is on your road bike as well or you could buy the road version
and also the coversion kit
Then you would have a solution to use both types of cleats.
There is also a single sided version of each which is cheaper but only measures from the left side (and doubles to estimate total power) which will most likely be totally fine unless you have a huge imbalance.
1 Like
Agree with @cartsman - two crank based PMs would be cheaper.
I’ve got the assiomas and done the SPD pedal hack for use on my gravel bike which has worked well for me.
1 Like
I also use assiomas with the hack, and it has been fine. The Rally’s weren’t out when I got them, but they are also significantly cheaper.
It took me a while to get the courage to do the hack, so I also run road shoes with a 2 bolt adapter.
I have garmin pedals and just slowly built up the cash to have it on both road and mtb…and i move those pedals to the gravel bike when needed.
My advice is to get the rally and pick which pedal style will be the most used. then as you can afford it -either buy the other pedal body and do the converson, or get a different PM on the other bike(s)
Assioma Duo-Shi spindles will fit SPD and SPD-SL Shimano pedals. Been using them on SPD’s (M520) for a few weeks and totally bulletproof. Half the price of Rally’s and can be quickly and easily moved between bikes as opposed to cranks (unless you’ve two compatible chain sets).
I use SPD’s on MTB’s and road bikes. I can walk “normally” off the bike (and not damage floor surfaces indoors) and clip in instantly instead of fiddling about.
1 Like
Depends on what you want to spend. I bought a left side Stages crank for my road bike and it’s fine. Basic, but absolutely fine. Certainly feels about right, and I know from a bike fit that I’m not massively unbalanced L/R. But it will doubtless be a little off.
I’ve just bought some dual sided Garmin Rally SPD pedals for a new bike build, so will see how they compare. No doubt better accuracy but much higher cost. But when I’m just using them to keep tabs on my rough wattage to make sure I don’t blow up on climbs, maybe they’re a bit overkill.
Attraction of the Stages crank is if you can get it on discount it is good value and will take even an idiot like me only five minutes to fit. For keeping rough tabs on wattage it’s great. And I’m not convinced many people, even with a super accurate meter, can hold exact wattages for outside workouts.