(door opening)
- Morning trainiacs.
We have an early start to today's fat bike ride
because I just picked up a little bit of
new pedal action for the fat bike.
Let me explain.
So when I first got the fat bike,
I just put on these platform pedals
because, well, I am a triathlete
so we're not very good at bike handling.
Now, one season in, I got myself an actual set
of winter cycling boots, I'll show you those later on.
And some clip in egg beater pedals.
Not for any reason besides I like saying
I've got egg beater pedals.
And I'm going to show you how to replace pedals.
Should be a very simple job, pretty much always is
if you've done it a bunch of times,
but there are a couple things that you need to know
the first few times you end up changing your pedals.
(upbeat music)
So when it comes to changing over your pedals,
there's one of two ways that you can do it.
One of them, you need fairly specialized bike tools for.
The other one, just any old Allen key will work.
Let me show you.
So see this here?
See that little spot in between the pedal and the crank?
Well that can actually be grabbed onto by a ...
One second.
That can actually be grabbed onto by a pair of pliers,
like this, or if you've got the right sized wrench,
you can get in there with a wrench.
But in a lot of cases, that wrench and the room
in between the pedal and the crank
isn't quite going to be enough room
for your standard wrenches here.
So your other option is that inside of all these pedals
is an Allen key.
You don't really need a specialized Allen key
like you might need a very specialized wrench
that is fairly thin and narrow, like this one here,
which is just whispy thin, like maybe only
an eighth of an inch thick.
These, just to load up on a whole bunch of these
when you've got all of these at your disposal,
typically quite easily, doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
So what we want to do is use the much more easily
accessible Allen keys, much more common and more
broadly usable because no matter which pedals
you've got, you can make this work.
Depending on which pedals you've got, you might not
be able to make things like this work.
And if you're using that, you could be stripping the bolt.
If you're using that, it might be a little bit
too wide, depending on the pedal.
So let me show you how to use the Allen key.
So quite often, pedals just from rust and corrosion,
will end up getting almost fused onto the crank.
So there's two good methods that I've figured out
to get off both sides.
Now approaching it from the right hand side of the bike
as you're sitting on it, here's what you do.
Get the pedal down to about 6:00 on the bottom,
insert the Allen key, basically just going to hold
the pedal and the bike in place and push down.
Then all of that torque coming from your body weight
is going to unlock the pedal really easily.
Unscrew that and then the other side can be a little bit
tougher because they thread the opposite way.
So what I end up finding works well is getting that
Allen key into a point that you can,
see how I've got it close enough that I can
grab the crank arm and the, here, we'll get this
really nice and close, but I can grab the crank arm
and the Allen key at the same time?
And then just squeeze them and it gives you that
nice bit of leverage to end up locking it out.
So once you've got those off,
I'll tell you how to install new pedals
so that they don't get locked up like that.
When you end up getting brand new pedals,
you're going to want to take a little bit of axle grease.
And this is like a really thick, goopy kind of grease.
It's almost like Crisco.
Take a little bit of that, put it all the way
around the pedal and that grease is going to allow
the pedal and shaft to slide in and out very easily
because the grease is going to stop it from corroding
onto the crank arm.
Also, I like to have a washer
that goes onto the new pedal.
And that washer is going to stop the inside
of the pedal shaft from also fusing to the crank arm.
And do that with both pedals,
then once that's done, of course,
we just do the reverse, different Allen key.
As you're tightening it, if you've got your bike mounted
in a bit of a stable place, like up against a wall,
it shouldn't really take a ton of pressure.
Just press gently on one side and if it's not going in,
don't force it because you're
going to end up cross threading.
But because you've got that grease on there,
it should end up going on, once you get it in
the right spot, fairly easily.
Basically you just get it to barely finger tight
because the motion of the pedal stroke itself
is going to end up tightening that up
on both sides.
All right, pedals are on, allow me to go gear up
and I'll show you my new boots.
Let's take this for a fat ride, shall we?
(intense music)
Oh, man it's just so much fun every stinking week.
There was one point there that I'm sure I was only
about three inches off the ground
but it felt like I was going to jump over
every single building in the area.
Let me give you the run down
quickly of how to dress for this.
It's a lot less than you think.
Okay, so you don't have to be a fat bike rider
to dress like this because the premise
is basically the same, whether,
I'll speak in Fahrenheit for everyone,
whether it's like 50 degrees or 40 degrees
or just below freezing.
Main thing is to have your head warm
and your neck warm.
So I just used a thermal Took, a very thin neck warmer,
and then here is where all the magic happens.
It's a lot less than you expect because
your body heats up so much.
So this here, super, super thin,
like just paper thin Scodi jacket that is windproof,
that's the key, just a tiny amount of insulation in there.
And why you don't go super thick on the exterior
is because you don't want to trap in everything.
And I've got a cycling jersey.
Again, no insulation there.
But as it gets colder and colder, what you do
is you just gradually add thin layers underneath.
So right now I have one thin merino wool layer
and then one base layer, that's it.
And today was, I've got to speak in Celsius here,
minus 11 Celsius so we're talking somewhere around
zero Fahrenheit, I think?
Boots.
These are the 45 North Wolf Gars.
Not bad, Tootsies were a little bit cold.
All I had was one layer of socks underneath.
And same sort of thing, wind proof, wind proof,
base layer underneath and I could get away with this
all the way down to like minus 15, maybe more.
Extend your riding season, trainiads.
All right, that is how you put on pedals properly.
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hit the subscribe button below.
If you are subscribed, got get yourself
a fat bike and have some fun.
How nice does my hair look?
Does it look good?
Oh, is that a side part of a center part?
Eeh, later.