First ride on the Del gravel pedals today. These are fantastic. Best MTB style pedal for fast gravel and racing. I go back and forth between road pedals and XTR, I love the locked in feel, power transfer, low stack, and lightweight of road pedals, but they leave a lot to be desired in the dirt. The cleats get destroyed with even the slightest bit of putting a foot down also. The Del weighs less than a Dura Ace road pedal, has similar stack, and the power transfer and locked in feel is very, very close to that of a road pedal. The additional platform size is a for real advantage with Del, not just marketing blurb. The Dels have quite a bit of drag from new, after they break in I suspect they will hang in a vertical position. If they do not break in to lower friction, I will probably open them up and put in some lower viscosity grease to free them up a bit. Even on the first ride, I did not find clipping to be difficult or tricky at all, for fast gravel, and racing, even for moderately technical terrain, these pedals are fine for me.
Any chance you could add some color to this statement ?
I have all of their pedals - they are amazing. All my XTRs are getting donated to the kids at the local bike club. My Epic 8 gets the CTRLs for downcountry days and it completely cleared up my calf strain on 20+ minute descents. I will probably race most xc events with those. The gravel ones feel great..if you are unclipping a lot at your events - probably don;t get them..they dont rotate into a predictable spot like look/shimano road pedals. I can change teh Q factor in less than 5 minutes and i am easily able to get all 4 of my bikes to have much more similar stance widths.
Shimano road cleats are plastic, and they get worn pretty badly anytime you put weight on them on a gravel road surface. The gravel digs into the plastic and damages the engagement surfaces of the cleat. This damage affects the engagement and release of the pedal pretty quickly. I love road shoes and pedals, but on gravel I only use them for racing to protect them from damage and the need to constantly be purchasing new cleats. Now, with how good the Del pedals are, maybe I will stop using road shoes and pedals even for gravel racing.
Ok then. Reading your post it sounded like you were referring to the Del pedals, not the Shimano cleats. Thanks for clearing that up.