OK - I’m in the market for a new set of pedals as I pick up a new bike this weekend (2006 Litespeed Vortex with full DA kit picked up off ebay for a bargain)
I currently have a road bike in the UK with Shimano Ultegra pedals and a road bike in Switzerland (girlfriend lives there and I’m out there quite a bit) with Look pedals. Don’t know what kind of Look pedals as they and the cleats came with the bike which I bought secondhand. I get on fine with both the Look and the Shimano in terms of performance, although the Shimano cleats seem to wear pretty quickly. Just this morning I got an offer through from a website I use - they have a ~40% discount on all Shimano pedals and a ~70% discount on all Look CX pedals. Given the bigger discount, my first thought was to get a topend pair of Look CX7 for the new bike and switch the pedals on my 2 existing road bikes so that I am running Look in the UK and Shimano in Switzerland.
Question is - are all Look cleats and pedals compatible with each other? And if not, are the CX cleats likely to be compatible with ‘old’ Look pedals? The Swiss bike is pretty old (Cannondale Caad2) so I assume the pedals are fairly old. Girlfriend also has a bike in Switzerland which uses some kind of cheap Look ripoffs (Look-a-likes?) which work fine with my cleats. Girlfriend is very similar size to me so would be useful if she could bring her shoes over and jump on one of my bikes when in the UK.
What I don’t want to end up with is having 3 road bikes which all need different cleats and have to change the cleats on my girlfriends shoes every time she is over. Friends already think I’m crazy having 4 pairs of cycling shoes (road shoes for UK, road shoes for Swiss, tri shoes for UK, MTB shoes for UK) without needing to add another pair! If the Looks aren’t compatible then are the Shimano DA pedals worth the extra over the Ultegras?
Thanks in advance for any help!