I’ve been using Look pedals since they first came out in the mid 80’s. Earlier this week I had my first cleat break. Luckily I was on the trainer or else I most defintely would have crashed.
Early last year I got the new Look Keo pedals I like them alot but on examining my broke cleats, I can now see that these new cleats have much less tolerance for wear than the old Look cleats. Look makes these bi materal cleats for all their pedals. If you have recently switched to these new cleats, don’t asume you’ll get the same life you did out of your old cleats.
The new cleats are a sandwich of 2 materials. The bottom is red (or black) plastic which I assume is similar to what the entire old cleats were made of. The new cleats than have a white low friction material on the back and toe areas which actually make contact with the front and back of the pedal. This white material now makes up about 1/3 of the overall thickness of the cleat.
Once you wear the red plastic on the new cleats down to the wear indicators, the cleats are in danger of failing since the white material is brittle. On the old cleats, you had much more red (or black) plastic to wear away since the whole cleat was made of it. I rode thousands of miles on these and wore out make sets of cleats but never had one break. Also, the old cleats seemed to wear in such a way that as they got bad, you could feel the difference when clipping in and out, thus you got some warning that it was time to replace. The nifty new white low friction material meant my Keo cleats felt fine right up until they broke. They did look like hell and if I had looked at them I would have known it was time to replace them, like many people, I’m not too good about visually checking my cleats before every ride. (I will be now).
So, if you are using the new Look cleats, heed the wear indicators and inspect them regularly.
One of my training buddies noticed the front lip of his Keo cleat was hanging by a thread, three of us were looking at this in awe as he tried to wiggle the plastic with his fingertip when we heard a faint “snap!” The front lip had worn down to the point it was so thin it just broke off. This was in the hotel room one night before a race, so we were pretty shocked. Luckily one of the guys in our group had just bought some Keo’s on the trip to the race. They were still in the box so we had replacement cleats. We were lucky in this situation.
Anyone reading this (myself included) needs to buy a second pair of cleats for your Keo pedals. ALWAYS keep an extra pair on hand just to be safe.
Since this incident, all of the guys in our training group have Keo pedals. We like the pedals, but wish the cleats were a little stronger.
On some post about these pedals from months ago someone made this remark: “I was amazed that LOOK was able to design a cleat even less durable than thier previous cleat.” (This seems to be very true.)
LOOK says that the ARC cleats won’t work with Keo pedals. However, I wonder if they don’t work at all, or just don’t work well. I think I’ll see what happens when I try to clip my wife’s LOOK ARC cleats into my Keo’s when I get home.
I should point out that my friend’s cleats were 3 MONTHS OLD! That’s way to early for a cleat to wear out. I think the wear indicators are much shallower on the new Keo cleats than they were on the old LOOK cleats. So when old LOOK converts swap over they seem to expect the same durability, which is not happening. This was my friends case. He was using a Shimano pedal before buying the Keo’s. Since his cleat incident, everyone that I know who uses Keo pedals is more concious about walking around on pavement, rough surfaces, and generally concious about abusing the cleats off the bike. So far with this in mind we have had no problems, but these cleats wear much faster than one would expect even from normal use.
Isn’t the point of the wear indicators to tell you it’s time to replace the cleats? So they should be close to failure at that point.
Yes, but I think I am a typical Look user who has gotten used to not having to look at the wear indicator to tell when my cleats are wearing out There is nothing “wrong” with the new cleats. Actually, I really like them. They are as smooth as butter. Unfortunately, they are smooth right up until they break. The purpose of my post was to point out to all the loyal Look users that you now have a very different animal on the bottom of your shoe so don’t assume you can treat them like you did the old style cleats. The new cleats have a dramaticaly different rate of wear than the old type cleats AND they will fail when they are worn whereas the old ones would tend to stop clipping in and out smoothly long before they would actually break, thus giving idiots like me a reminder to check the wear and a week or 2 (or maybe even a month) to get to the bike shop to buy another pair. I’m definitely going to buy a reserve set of Keo cleats so I am not ever tempted to ride on a worn pair.
There are folks out there who have close to 20 years experience with Look cleats and I just wanted to point out to them that when they switch over to the new cleats, the game has changed and we do have to really study the wear indicators now.
LOOK says that the ARC cleats won’t work with Keo pedals. However, I wonder if they don’t work at all, or just don’t work well. I think I’ll see what happens when I try to clip my wife’s LOOK ARC cleats into my Keo’s when I get home.
The Keo uses a smaller cleat than the regular Look cleat so they are not cross compatable. When the Keos first came out, Look was only making the new bi-material cleat for the Keo’s but now they are available in both sizes.