Road clearance pedals

I’ve had some bad experiences with pedal clipping during this crit season, so I’m trying multiple ways to avoid this in the future (different frame, bigger tires etc.).
I’m now looking into pedals and stumbled upon Shimano’s website. In the specs you can find something called ‘Road clearance’ with some sort of degrees: https://bike.shimano.com/en-NZ/product/component/duraace-r9100/PD-R9100.html
I can not find any information about this, but it seams that Shimano’s road pedals currently are in the range from 31 to 35 degrees clearance. What does this mean? And would you notice a difference in real life?

In order of effectiveness for allowing more pedalling in a steep turn:

1.) Higher bottom bracket. (so think cyclocross frame: in, gravel frame: out)
2.) Shorter crank arms.
3.) Narrower pedal bodies.

Let’s hear from the Fixie Racers! They HAVE to pedal through the corner, correct? I bet they all run shorter crank arms…

1 Like

I can pedal through some uncomfortably agressive leans during my local Tuesday night amateur crit rides with my 8000 Ultegra pedals, the entire bottom side is really slim relative to the spindle and gets smaller towards the outside allowing for more clearance when leanned over. That said I’m not a racer so YMMV. I can’t imagine getting much more clearance without going to a shorter crank arm, there’s just not much more material to remove from the bottom of the pedal without cutting into the pedal spindle.

I haven’t researched much recently but last time I did speedplay had the best clearance in this regard. Might have changed but I’d definitely at least look at those if avoiding pedal strikes by changing pedals is your goal

As others have mentioned - shorter crank arms is probably the biggest bang for your buck

FWIW - power meter pedals, in particular the Powertap P1 that I used to have on my race bike greatly limit this and IMO should not be placed on a bike that you’re going to race in crits or a RR

A pedal manufacturer cannot quote a clearance in absence of frame + crank geometry information or at least assumption (BB axis height, crankset width pedal face to pedal face, crankarm length). These factors can change the max lean angle much more than the pedal design itself.

2 Likes