Equipment I've Used - Ending My 5 Year Run with Egg Beater Pedals

In the beginning (1996), I had Look pedals.  It wasn't that I had to replace the cleats almost yearly that bothered me, rather that they had zero traction when walking.  This was a tolerable situation when walking on reasonably-well textured surfaces such as asphalt, concrete, gravel, or grass, but a horrible one on indoor non-carpeted surfaces like those found inside a convenience store; walking inside one as a pit-stop on a bike ride was always a risk for a groin injury.  When it came to running in them, as for the T1 and T2 transitions in triathlon, they were always a risk for wiping out.  This, and a little lack of information, is why I used my Crank Brother's Egg Beater pedals and mountain bike shoes for my first iron distance race.  I figured, of all days to not want to wipe out and potentially negatively affect my race, that would be it.  Little did I know that the transition area at IMLP was on grass and I really didn't need to worry about this.

My first cycling shoes, by Diadora.

Slick-as-shit Look cleat and shoe.

Look pedals.

No longer in "triathlon mode" after IMLP in 2010, I went on a bike ride with a couple of friends and brought my regular cycling shoes along, only to realize I still had the Egg Beater pedals on my road bike.  Not much I could do that day other than bike in the Teva sandals I arrived in.  But between this silly mistake and the better footing my mountain bike shoes provided, I decided I'd start running only one cleat pattern going forward, with no idea what a pain in the ass this decision was going to be.  

Egg Beater pedals.

Mountain bike shoes (Shimano).  Note
how cleat is recessed within the shoe tread.

This was also roughly when I decided to buy dedicated triathlon shoes and coincidentally corresponded to the end of when shoe manufacturers were making cycling shoes that accommodated both 3-bolt and 2-bolt cleat mounting patterns.  The powers that be had spoken - triathlon and most road shoes would be drilled for 3-bolts, not 2.

If you don't know, most bike shops don't carry triathlon cycling shoes and those that do tend to carry a single brand.  Availability opens up on the internet, however, and by ordering some 11 pairs of shoes I was able to try many manufacturers (you know they all have slightly different fit characteristics, right?) and old models that would still fit 2-bolts.  I settled on the carbon-soled Exustar, pictured below.  2 Velcro straps means easy in/out, though one might argue that the orientation of the Velcro so the straps pull toward the crank to open them is less ideal b/c they can get caught up in the chain if you try to leave them attached to the pedals and don/doff them while riding.  

Exustar triathlon shoes, Egg Beater cleat installed.

Anyway, shoes selected and cleats installed I hopped onto my bike only to realize a problem: mountain bike shoes have tread around the periphery of the shoe sole that rests on the Egg Beater pedal spindle; road/tri shoes do not.  This means there is no stabilizing interplay between the tri shoe and the pedal and the very small connection between the pedal and the cleat alone is very sloppy.

Not to be discouraged, I headed back to the internet to hunt down a solution, and found a few.  The first was an Egg Beater road cleat that had the peripheral tread as part of the cleat, and I did eventually end up ordering them.  Another thing I found was a Shimano "pontoon" that simply got placed over the cleat and bolted into place with the cleat bolts.  The bonus was, the bike shop en route to a triathlon I was participating in had them in stock.  

Egg Beater 3-bolt road shoe cleat
(pictured upside down).

Shimano pontoon.

Night before the event (wait for it), pontoons installed, feeling all proud of myself... only to learn that they didn't quite fit seamlessly with the Egg Beater pedals.  It was all I could do to slam down hard enough to get the cleats to engage because these rubber pontoons are sized for Shimano SPD pedals and needed the center of the tread to be shaved down to fit the Egg Beaters.  Once shaved down however, the fit was fantastic.  This really was a remarkable set-up because I had all the stability I wanted while walking and while riding, and the cleats are also lower profile than the Look cleats were so traction issues aside, they were just so much more natural to walk in.  I really could not understand why this movement (mountain bike cleats on road/tri shoes) didn't take off because this really seemed like the best solution possible, the bees knees, as it were.   

Egg Beater cleat with a now-significantly-worn
Shimano Pontoon.  Installation includes a Bebop
cleat adapter to protect the carbon shoe sole.

Once the Crank Brothers road cleats arrived (3-bolt connectivity) I installed them on my Diadora road shoes (which only supported a 3 bolt pattern).  It took no time at all to understand why this product was discontinued: they were crap, with the "traction horse shoe" crumbling apart right away.  Once that crumbled, the interplay of shoe to pedal was again sloppy.  The horse shoe was also unnecessarily large.  To fit with the pedal it really only needed to be in line with the spindle; there was no reason for the tread to extend back toward the middle of the foot or forward toward the toes.  All that did was make the shoe as awkward to stomp around in as the bigger Look cleats were.  Unfortunately, I had purchased multiple pairs since I thought they'd be great and hard to find again since they were discontinued.  (Yours for free if you want them, let me know!)

Back to the internet, I found another version of Crank Brother's road shoe cleats (with a 2-bolt pattern) which resembled the Shimano pontoon, but was all one brass piece instead of two pieces that nested together.  This was going to require a 3-bolt-to-2-bolt pattern adapter, however, to work with my road shoes.  Another learning around this time was a report of carbon-soled shoes cracking when used with 2-bolt cleats; too much force applied to too small an area, or something like that.  Reportedly, this also can lead to hot spots when biking high mileage.  At any rate, I found some 3-bolt-to-2-bolt adapters (Bebop) and bought a pair for each set of shoes, and also the alternate Crank Brother's road shoe cleats.

Bebop cleat adapter.

Egg Beater 2-bolt road cleat.

The thing is, by this time I'd come to know I had a leg length discrepancy and needed to have my left shoe cleat shimmed.  This led to a couple of annoying situations.  

For 1 thing, shimming the small cleat out from the bottom of the shoe changed the sensation of trying to land the cleat to the pedal.  Normally if you miss, you can feel a little on the bottom of the shoe where you are and slide your foot around to line up for the snap in.  But here, rubbing the bottom of the shoe around wasn't helpful b/c the cleat was protruding awkwardly out from the bottom of the shoe and trust me, it just made it less straight forward to engage.  

The next issue came from the construction of the Crank Brother's cleat, with the rubber being easily knocked off the brass pontoon that is positioned freely in space (due to the shimming) rather than pressed against the sole of the shoe.  Without the rubber, the interaction with the pedal spindle was reduced almost to the point of feeling absent.  And unfortunately, I lost the rubber from the shimmed shoe on only 1 wearing of the shoes.

Once the quantity of my LLD was established via X-ray the recommendation was to use shims in all my footwear.  I found a product that consists of 6- 1 mm layers of non-compressible vinyl that can be cut to size.  I'm still working to get these into all my shoes since cutting the stuff to fit is a huge pain in the ass, but got right on cutting one down to go underneath the triangular adapting plate used on my tri shoes.  Having the shims under the adapter plate worked great, barely changing the feel of how the cleat (using the Shimano pontoon) interacted with the pedal relative to the un-shimmed shoe. 

Over time, however, the pontoon has become bent by my walking since it extends beyond the surface created by the shimmed adapter plate.  I'm not really sure this is a problem, but here's where I am now:

Even though this Egg Beater cleat plus Shimano pontoon has proven remarkably robust, surviving 4 years of my tri shoes being used as my primary cycling shoe without replacement of any component (cleat or pontoon), I fear the bending around the edge of the adapter plate is going to increase the rate of wear on the pontoon that by this point in time will probably be really hard to find, even on the internet.  It's now a more than 4-year old part that I don't even know is made any more.

My road shoes had been sitting around waiting for me to cut and install the vinyl shims under the adapter plate.  The thing is, with my earlier observation that the Crank Brothers rubber pontoon seemed less robust to shearing action, I'm thinking that even if their being pressed against the adapter plate holds them on better (relative to being suspended in space when only shimmed right under the bolts), they may still take a beating over time as I walk in them because, like the Shimano pontoons, they extend a bit beyond the adapter plate.  It's silly to need to replace a perfectly good cleat because the funny little rubber thing keeps falling off.

2-Bolt Egg Beater road cleat showing pontoons extending
past the adapter plate, with vinyl shims under the plate.

And about those adapter plates, they're made of plastic.  Without some metal washers (which weren't provided with the item) I think the plastic will eventually break around where the bolts are and who knows if I'll be able to get replacements.  Though I guess it's possible that I'm their only user and that the inventor is sitting on a pile of them in his basement...  

Want to know what's funny?  Earlier this year I learned that Keo apparently makes Look cleats with a traction pad on them.  And apparently Shimano's 3-bolt road cleats also have traction pads.  All this time I've gone to unbelievable lengths to be able to use Egg Beater pedals with my road and tri cycling shoes and it was apparently completely unnecessary.  How the hell I missed that but found all these other obscure and discontinued parts is completely beyond me.  At any rate, now that the cleats on my tri shoes have finally worn down and need to be replaced, it seemed like the right time to give in and do things the easy way.  

In person, the hex bolts can be seen digging into the Bebop adapter, possibly compressing the "non-compressible" vinyl shim layers (left).  However the Shimano cleat comes with metal washers which probably protect the plastic cleat body (right).  Moving back to 3-bolt cleats means I wouldn't need the Bebop adapters but I think they're nice for holding the shim material evenly against the sole of the shoes, so they'll probably remain on the left shoes only.