My Niner is supposed to be a gravel bike in theory, but
given the frame's tire clearance tolerance of 25–50C,
I'm running the minimum 25C tires,
with 330mm handlebars and LOOK Keo road pedals,
operating it in a spec far removed from a gravel bike.
However, in the near future I'll be heading out to a certain shrine with a customer
and we'll be walking around the grounds,
so I found myself needing to switch to
walkable-soled SPD two-hole clipless shoes and compatible pedals.
When I went to Ise Shrine last New Year's (→here),
I changed into foldable portable shoes for creek wading.
↑Front fork
↑Frame's seat tube
My Niner frame has a contour-like pattern,
and given the frame color is green,
I'd already purchased
Crank Brothers' Topo Edition
Mallet E pedals.
The Topo Edition is
a limited model designed based on the topographic map of the Santa Ana Mountains
near Crank Brothers' headquarters.
It comes in three models: flat pedals like the Stamp 7 in small and large sizes,
and the Mallet E, a platform-equipped eggbeater-style clipless pedal.
It was announced in November 2023 and announced as a one-time production run,
so I bought it at the time because I didn't like the idea of not being able to get it later
if I wanted it. However, it turns out there are still
a small amount of stock of all models at distributors.
The Stamp 7 in small or large is ¥29,700 including tax,
and the Mallet E is ¥30,800 including tax,
so comparing these two by the presence or absence of clipless function
isn't really appropriate, but the pre-tax retail price difference is ¥1,000.
I looked into what the "Topo Edition premium" is as a price difference from the regular model,
only to find that the regular model itself
has actually had a price increase since 2023,
so the current tax-included price for the Stamp 7 in small or large is ¥32,600,
and the polished finish versions of those are
¥34,800 including tax,
while the regular Mallet E
is ¥34,800 including tax.
This creates the odd situation where
the limited edition model, still sold at its original retail price,
is actually cheaper.
↑Topographic map design
The Mallet E, as far as this company's pedals go,
has a pedal shaft length that falls into the long spindle category,
so I procured a separately-sold short spindle kit.
This makes the distance from the pedal mounting surface of the crank arm
to the center of the clipless mechanism
roughly the same as my LOOK road pedals.
↑Compared side by side, it looks like this
↑State with only one side replaced
Despite being called a spindle (axle) kit,
it comes with replacement bearings and rubber seals
and functions as a complete refresh kit.
↑The part of the pedal shaft that contacts the crank
has one groove cut into it.
↑The other side has no groove.
This is a rule across the pedal industry, transcending manufacturers:
"The side with the groove is the left pedal."
Eggbeater-style pedals are hard to distinguish left from right visually,
so it's handy to remember this.
When swapping spindles, being careful to go from grooved to grooved
and non-grooved to non-grooved helps prevent left-right mistakes.
↑These are the cleats that come with the Mallet E.
They're marked with L and R, and the cleat pawls are asymmetrical left to right.
These cleats have 6° floating (3° per side),
and when you install the one marked R on the right shoe,
twisting your heel outward releases at 15°,
while twisting inward releases at 20°.
Since you normally don't twist inward,
essentially installing R on the right and L on the left gives 15° release,
and deliberately reversing them gives 20° release.
Personally, I don't need floating,
so I purchased separately-sold 0° cleats.
In practice, like most manufacturers,
even the self-proclaimed 0° cleats do move slightly.
With LOOK's old Delta cleats on road pedals,
using black cleats on the shoe side
and adjustable models where a dial on the pedal back
controls the protrusion of a tongue-like part that clamps the cleat
(like the PP286 or CX6),
setting the dial to zero approaches complete fixation.
With Speedplay, if you set the cleat's range-of-motion set screws
to press against the C-ring on both sides,
it seems to achieve complete fixation,
but there's still quite a bit of play (at the level of demanding complete fixation)
between the cleat pawls and the pedal pawl receivers.
The cleats are silver for distinction,
and from 0° fixation, twisting your foot releases at 15°.
↑This little guy
The cleat pawls are symmetrical left to right,
so installing R on the left yields the same result,
but there's no reason to deliberately go against convention,
so I install R on the right and L on the left.
↑This is unrelated to today's project,
but it's a cleat kit for using eggbeater-style pedals
with road three-hole shoes I already owned.
↑The metal part of one cleat has dots stamped on it,
and the current version has two dots,
but the included instructions still show the old single dot.
In either case, installing the dot-marked cleat on the right foot gives 15° release,
and reversing it gives 20° release, same as the standard cleats.
The floating is also 6° like the standard,
but this cleat kit uses narrower cleats dedicated to it,
so you can't swap out the metal parts of the cleats
or convert to 0° cleats.
Now, how do you attach this to the shoe's three holes?
↑Like this—the rubber part comes off.
LOOK's original non-OEM, Shimano's first road clipless pedal
was SPD two-hole spec. With Dura-Ace it's model number PD-7410.
Its cleat was SM-SH71, which had just a bare minimum
of walking pontoons on the left and right of the cleat metal part.
Crank Brothers' old SPD two-hole road cleats
looked similar.
Back then, even road shoes with poor walking soles
often came with both LOOK three-hole and SPD two-hole,
so you could use it. But these days, most road shoes
only have LOOK three-hole, so they've apparently redesigned it
with a larger walking rubber area.
Cheap model nylon-soled shoes plus this cleat kit
will make you walk like a penguin even in road shoes,
but it's walkable enough.
As for shoes, I know from experience that I can wear
Sidi Mega or Shimano Wide unmodified.
I'd disposed of all my SPD two-hole shoes,
but recently a customer let me try on shoes she'd bought but never worn,
and while the labeled size matched what I usually wear,
the length worked but the width was a bit tight,
so after getting the shoes from her I stretched them with a shoe stretcher.
The unnatural bulge on the little-toe side of the right shoe in the image above
is the state during modification.
dhb is the apparel brand of the famous Wiggle.
↑I'm expanding the little-toe side quite a bit from the inside,
but even after removing the shoe stretcher,
some shape change persists.
↑Shoe stretcher
It has lots of half-holes like shiitake mushroom logs,
so you can attach any of several expansion adapters
from round to oval-shaped to holes in various positions.
Like Baltan alien pincers,
it opens up with a grating sound inside the shoe.
(V)o¥o(V) ﻻｫｯﻻｫｯﻻｫｯﻻｫ
↑By the way, you can get this to come up as a conversion on IME by typing "barutan."
Of course, you can also expand just the width
without any expansion adapters.
I swapped out the shoelaces for
"Quick Laces" from Salomon.
I've installed the pedals.
Since this is meant to be "temple-and-shrine-wandering mode,"
I might swap back to road pedals for normal use.
I'll need to check the difference in seatpost height.
I adjusted the cleat's left-right position
so the shoe is maxed out toward the crank,
in other words, as narrow as possible.
The clearance with the crank arm is plenty.
Although the cleat has a slight wobble even at 0°,
SPD two-hole cleats sometimes get fixed slightly askew
with your foot angle not feeling straight, so adjustment is critical.
In the previous image it's slightly off too,
so I'll correct it later.
What matters is not "whether your foot angle is actually straight"
but "whether your foot angle feels straight."
In my case, with fixed cleats, I have to adjust my right shoe's heel
to turn inward just the tiniest bit
(the shoe isn't straight, but it feels straight to my body)
or my knees will explode within 100km.
If the angle is dialed in right, no amount of riding distance
will cause your knees to explode.
given the frame's tire clearance tolerance of 25–50C,
I'm running the minimum 25C tires,
with 330mm handlebars and LOOK Keo road pedals,
operating it in a spec far removed from a gravel bike.
However, in the near future I'll be heading out to a certain shrine with a customer
and we'll be walking around the grounds,
so I found myself needing to switch to
walkable-soled SPD two-hole clipless shoes and compatible pedals.
When I went to Ise Shrine last New Year's (→here),
I changed into foldable portable shoes for creek wading.
↑Front fork
↑Frame's seat tube
My Niner frame has a contour-like pattern,
and given the frame color is green,
I'd already purchased
Crank Brothers' Topo Edition
Mallet E pedals.
The Topo Edition is
a limited model designed based on the topographic map of the Santa Ana Mountains
near Crank Brothers' headquarters.
It comes in three models: flat pedals like the Stamp 7 in small and large sizes,
and the Mallet E, a platform-equipped eggbeater-style clipless pedal.
It was announced in November 2023 and announced as a one-time production run,
so I bought it at the time because I didn't like the idea of not being able to get it later
if I wanted it. However, it turns out there are still
a small amount of stock of all models at distributors.
The Stamp 7 in small or large is ¥29,700 including tax,
and the Mallet E is ¥30,800 including tax,
so comparing these two by the presence or absence of clipless function
isn't really appropriate, but the pre-tax retail price difference is ¥1,000.
I looked into what the "Topo Edition premium" is as a price difference from the regular model,
only to find that the regular model itself
has actually had a price increase since 2023,
so the current tax-included price for the Stamp 7 in small or large is ¥32,600,
and the polished finish versions of those are
¥34,800 including tax,
while the regular Mallet E
is ¥34,800 including tax.
This creates the odd situation where
the limited edition model, still sold at its original retail price,
is actually cheaper.
↑Topographic map design
The Mallet E, as far as this company's pedals go,
has a pedal shaft length that falls into the long spindle category,
so I procured a separately-sold short spindle kit.
This makes the distance from the pedal mounting surface of the crank arm
to the center of the clipless mechanism
roughly the same as my LOOK road pedals.
↑Compared side by side, it looks like this
↑State with only one side replaced
Despite being called a spindle (axle) kit,
it comes with replacement bearings and rubber seals
and functions as a complete refresh kit.
↑The part of the pedal shaft that contacts the crank
has one groove cut into it.
↑The other side has no groove.
This is a rule across the pedal industry, transcending manufacturers:
"The side with the groove is the left pedal."
Eggbeater-style pedals are hard to distinguish left from right visually,
so it's handy to remember this.
When swapping spindles, being careful to go from grooved to grooved
and non-grooved to non-grooved helps prevent left-right mistakes.
↑These are the cleats that come with the Mallet E.
They're marked with L and R, and the cleat pawls are asymmetrical left to right.
These cleats have 6° floating (3° per side),
and when you install the one marked R on the right shoe,
twisting your heel outward releases at 15°,
while twisting inward releases at 20°.
Since you normally don't twist inward,
essentially installing R on the right and L on the left gives 15° release,
and deliberately reversing them gives 20° release.
Personally, I don't need floating,
so I purchased separately-sold 0° cleats.
In practice, like most manufacturers,
even the self-proclaimed 0° cleats do move slightly.
With LOOK's old Delta cleats on road pedals,
using black cleats on the shoe side
and adjustable models where a dial on the pedal back
controls the protrusion of a tongue-like part that clamps the cleat
(like the PP286 or CX6),
setting the dial to zero approaches complete fixation.
With Speedplay, if you set the cleat's range-of-motion set screws
to press against the C-ring on both sides,
it seems to achieve complete fixation,
but there's still quite a bit of play (at the level of demanding complete fixation)
between the cleat pawls and the pedal pawl receivers.
The cleats are silver for distinction,
and from 0° fixation, twisting your foot releases at 15°.
↑This little guy
The cleat pawls are symmetrical left to right,
so installing R on the left yields the same result,
but there's no reason to deliberately go against convention,
so I install R on the right and L on the left.
↑This is unrelated to today's project,
but it's a cleat kit for using eggbeater-style pedals
with road three-hole shoes I already owned.
↑The metal part of one cleat has dots stamped on it,
and the current version has two dots,
but the included instructions still show the old single dot.
In either case, installing the dot-marked cleat on the right foot gives 15° release,
and reversing it gives 20° release, same as the standard cleats.
The floating is also 6° like the standard,
but this cleat kit uses narrower cleats dedicated to it,
so you can't swap out the metal parts of the cleats
or convert to 0° cleats.
Now, how do you attach this to the shoe's three holes?
↑Like this—the rubber part comes off.
LOOK's original non-OEM, Shimano's first road clipless pedal
was SPD two-hole spec. With Dura-Ace it's model number PD-7410.
Its cleat was SM-SH71, which had just a bare minimum
of walking pontoons on the left and right of the cleat metal part.
Crank Brothers' old SPD two-hole road cleats
looked similar.
Back then, even road shoes with poor walking soles
often came with both LOOK three-hole and SPD two-hole,
so you could use it. But these days, most road shoes
only have LOOK three-hole, so they've apparently redesigned it
with a larger walking rubber area.
Cheap model nylon-soled shoes plus this cleat kit
will make you walk like a penguin even in road shoes,
but it's walkable enough.
As for shoes, I know from experience that I can wear
Sidi Mega or Shimano Wide unmodified.
I'd disposed of all my SPD two-hole shoes,
but recently a customer let me try on shoes she'd bought but never worn,
and while the labeled size matched what I usually wear,
the length worked but the width was a bit tight,
so after getting the shoes from her I stretched them with a shoe stretcher.
The unnatural bulge on the little-toe side of the right shoe in the image above
is the state during modification.
dhb is the apparel brand of the famous Wiggle.
↑I'm expanding the little-toe side quite a bit from the inside,
but even after removing the shoe stretcher,
some shape change persists.
↑Shoe stretcher
It has lots of half-holes like shiitake mushroom logs,
so you can attach any of several expansion adapters
from round to oval-shaped to holes in various positions.
Like Baltan alien pincers,
it opens up with a grating sound inside the shoe.
(V)o¥o(V) ﻻｫｯﻻｫｯﻻｫｯﻻｫ
↑By the way, you can get this to come up as a conversion on IME by typing "barutan."
Of course, you can also expand just the width
without any expansion adapters.
I swapped out the shoelaces for
"Quick Laces" from Salomon.
I've installed the pedals.
Since this is meant to be "temple-and-shrine-wandering mode,"
I might swap back to road pedals for normal use.
I'll need to check the difference in seatpost height.
I adjusted the cleat's left-right position
so the shoe is maxed out toward the crank,
in other words, as narrow as possible.
The clearance with the crank arm is plenty.
Although the cleat has a slight wobble even at 0°,
SPD two-hole cleats sometimes get fixed slightly askew
with your foot angle not feeling straight, so adjustment is critical.
In the previous image it's slightly off too,
so I'll correct it later.
What matters is not "whether your foot angle is actually straight"
but "whether your foot angle feels straight."
In my case, with fixed cleats, I have to adjust my right shoe's heel
to turn inward just the tiniest bit
(the shoe isn't straight, but it feels straight to my body)
or my knees will explode within 100km.
If the angle is dialed in right, no amount of riding distance
will cause your knees to explode.