New pedals for the e-bike

Over the last few months, I’ve been enjoying riding my Tenways bike a lot. In the past few years, I’ve biked less and less. In Oakland, this was due to working from home and not having anywhere interesting to go to nearby. But since moving to Portland and after the rainy season has gone this year, I’ve been loving the casual riding outside.

It’s mild exercise and exploration which make it fun and rewarding.

For an ebike at it’s price tag (when Kristen got it for me it was $1700), the main selling points include the Gates carbon belt drive and the “commuter” attachments like fenders, lights, and a bell. I’m not sure how much a carbon belt drive conversion or kit costs but it’s a really nice system to have on a commuter / city bike. But other components on the bike are not the best or even premium in any way.

Instead of going out and upgrading each part of my bike without riding much, I gave myself milestones at which I can upgrade certain components. And the first milestone was 125 miles ridden, which I hit about 2 weeks ago and for this one, I wanted to upgrade the pedals.

Two main reasons why I wanted to get different pedals, the stock pedals (shown below) were slippery especially if there was any water outside (rain or wet shoes) and they were smaller than I’d like them. So once I hit 125 miles, I started researching and came down to a list of a few pedals.

Below I’ll cover each of the ones I tried on the bike and the ones I settled with:

First I tried out the Range pedals from PNW Components. These were pretty big and wide for me but overall felt good. These are plastic “composite” pedals. For being plastic, they are relatively heavy (not that I’m going for lightness, just something I noticed). I ended up putting these on Kristen’s e-bike.

The RaceFace Aeffect were the priciest of the bunch, they are gorgeous to look at but not my favorite to ride on. They’re made of aluminum.

I made sure to get a cheaper pair to compare against. These generic K-PEDC pedals are made of aluminum and are pretty good for the price point. I did not pick these as my pair to keep. That’s next.

These composite Stamp 1 pedals from Crank Brothers are what I decided to keep on my bike. They are a perfect mix of smooth riding, size, looks, and price point. I’ve been riding with them for about a week now and I’m happy with them. Compared to the stock pedals, these are a magnitude better!

In the future, I probably won’t be comparing components like this because it results in a lot of effort testing essentially the same thing. What I learned from this is that the pedals are mainly a subjective thing and there isn’t much objective besides the price, number of pins, and possibly size to care about. Other things don’t really matter if they’re from a reputable maker.