This is for anyone who owns these pedals, or may be thinking about buying them, the main complaint of these pedals is the evo bearing, which is just a thrust washer, as seen in the second image, it sits under the dust cap with a small spring keeping it under some tension, the main issue is dirt gets in through the gap between the dust cap and the pedal body, so you have to remove it, clean it, and re-grease it relatively frequently, also people have complained about axial play developing too
Well I removed mine and replaced it with this mod, you could go about it in a few different ways, it largely depends on what king of igus bearing or thrust washer you choose to use, there's about 5.5mm of un-threaded spindle when you remove the evo bearing, as seen in the third image, I choose to use an igus JFM-05-07-05 flange bearing, I took a razor blade and cut the sleeve off it, leaving only the flange, which is 5mm ID, 11mm OD, and is 1mm thick, I then sanded down the cut sleeve section so it was flat and smooth
I then brought some alloy spacers which are 5mm ID, 10mm OD, and are 5mm in length, so 6mm in length once you include the 1mm igus washer, I then glued the spacer to one of the jam nuts, just so rotation can only occur between the igus bushing and the pedal or the spacer, not between the spacer and the nut, then I used another jam nut to lock the other in place, tightened them to remove the axial play, and bob's you uncle, now I have a low maintenance solution, and they spin easy enough too, plus I replaced the stock pins with longer 1/8 x 3/8 round head screws (about 9.5mm long) and I removed the two pins in the center, they have great grip now, the pedals are about 10mm thick at the edges, and now weigh about 340g, the finished product can be seen in the fourth image
by Asleep_Detective3274
1 Comment
Update us in a few months regarding how the mod lasts. Typically, it will still get dirty unless some sort of seal is place there. This is the simple nature of mechanical interfaces that don’t have a sealing material between them and there’s no mitigation to the design, such as “labyrinth” seals which also have limited applications. The problem is water will have suspended materials and there’s little one can do about that. Suspended materials get past even tight interfaces and some seals, water then can drain out, suspended materials left inside out of suspension and now trapped.
It looks good in principle, but thrush washers as bearings are often used for a reason, such as something was found in testing that a bearing really couldn’t handle well or what the bearing was attached to.
Give us a report sometime and see if the play is mitigated or how often play develops. You’ll probably get some run-in play in a few rides, but that’s normal and probably preferable and maybe after that, if you leave it alone, play will not develop further.