Okay - try to make this a readers digest version: wife has touchy knees from running back in her college/law school days (used cheap shoes). When she started cycling (before we met) she tried SPD-R style pedals which caused knee pain so she switched to Speedplay X series pedals and pain went away! I came along and upgraded everything but her pedals until she discovered that walking in wet grass/mud and no cleat covers sucked. She was one of the first to get Speedplay Zero's when they hit the street.
Fast forward to last year when we got Shimano R-214 shoes and after a few months her knees started bothering her again. Tried everthing to fix problem and finally resolved that it was the shoes so in February we got Specialized Pro Carbon shoes with "body geometry" insoles as well as a second set of Zeros for her TT bike (had been using Zero's on road and X series on TT bike). Once again the problem was temporarily resolved but at the beginning of the month, she was again having some minor/major knee pains so I took a close look at her pedals/shoes/cleats this time. What I discovered was that on the older set of Zero's (stainless) the blue thermo plastic around the point where the cleat spring clip attaches around the pedal was worn/rounded and allowed a substantial amount of medial (lateral? ) wobble/rotation when clipped into the old pedals yet next to none with the new pedals - bingo!
Apparently this also happened to be the source of a clicking noise (originally that started up 2-weeks ago (thought it was the bottom bracket) as well as her knee pains. Called speedplay and talked to tech support and based on that conversation, it appears that we should have been regularly applying dry lube - possibly as often as prior to every ride. So I am curious if any of you that use speedplay x series/zero style pedals, have noticed this type of wear? Do you use dry lube and if so, do you use it prior to each ride? At $185 per set of pedals (not too mention $40 for the cleats) replacing them when they wear out every two years will get old fast!
Michael
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Fast forward to last year when we got Shimano R-214 shoes and after a few months her knees started bothering her again. Tried everthing to fix problem and finally resolved that it was the shoes so in February we got Specialized Pro Carbon shoes with "body geometry" insoles as well as a second set of Zeros for her TT bike (had been using Zero's on road and X series on TT bike). Once again the problem was temporarily resolved but at the beginning of the month, she was again having some minor/major knee pains so I took a close look at her pedals/shoes/cleats this time. What I discovered was that on the older set of Zero's (stainless) the blue thermo plastic around the point where the cleat spring clip attaches around the pedal was worn/rounded and allowed a substantial amount of medial (lateral? ) wobble/rotation when clipped into the old pedals yet next to none with the new pedals - bingo!
Apparently this also happened to be the source of a clicking noise (originally that started up 2-weeks ago (thought it was the bottom bracket) as well as her knee pains. Called speedplay and talked to tech support and based on that conversation, it appears that we should have been regularly applying dry lube - possibly as often as prior to every ride. So I am curious if any of you that use speedplay x series/zero style pedals, have noticed this type of wear? Do you use dry lube and if so, do you use it prior to each ride? At $185 per set of pedals (not too mention $40 for the cleats) replacing them when they wear out every two years will get old fast!
Michael
¯\_(ツ)_/¯