Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Velo Orange Sabot Pedals


For the past month Christine has been riding the Velo Orange Gran Cru Sabot Pedals. The folks at Velo Orange were kind enough to send me a set of these pedals to evaluate and as soon as I saw them I knew they should go on Christine's Allant. These pedals are nice. Classy. Like my wife. Like her bike.

Now Christine had never complained about the stock nylon pedals on her bike and in truth those pedals have held up fine on her commutes and adventures. But the Sabots gleam like jewels. After her first few rides with the Sabots Christine noted how smooth the bearings are in the new pedals (Actually she proclaimed them very "spinny"). Each pedal actually has two sets of inboard sealed bearings and an outboard sealed bearing making them very solid, smooth turning and low-maintenance. If the pedals ever do need to be serviced, the sealed bearings can be replaced.

The pedals have a big, flat (actually slightly concave surface) with replaceable grippy pins. They work great with the footwear Christine and I favor, Keen Sandals, but the Sabots would work well with pretty much any shoe. As you can see in the photo below, the Sabots are big pedals, with a bigger platform than the stock pedals they replaced. The additional surface area together with the pins makes for a real solid shoe pedal connection even in wet weather. (Unfortunately, bike commuting in Issaquah in November has given Christine lots of opportunities to verify the truth of this.)



The Sabots are a very nice, high quality flat pedals. Christine likes them a lot and so do I. Russ Roca also has been putting some miles on a set of Sabots and you can read his review here. BTW, Russ takes  much better pictures than I do!

Keep 'em rolling,

Kent "Mountain Turtle" Peterson
Issaquah WA USA

2 comments:

recumbent conspiracy theorist said...

That is a good looking platform. I'd put those on my commuter for sure.

upriver said...

Strongly considering these for my Campeur. I'm on my third pair of pedals trying to get it right. I feel these are a bit on the expensive side, but they just might be worth it.