I looked a lot recently, and ended up with a pair of spank spoon pedals. They were the best value for money with the criteria I had:
Foot size specific (just makes sense to me to have pedals appropriately sized for your shoes)
(Good) aluminum. While plastic pedals have gotten really good, I still don’t trust them quite as much to survive impacts. I’m not a fan of magnesium or low end cast either, although that is probably not based in much real world benefits.
Rebuild kits available. (The pedal bodies don’t really wear, so I like being able to rebuild them)
Name brand. I had the nastiest bail I’ve ever had when my previous pedals broke (which were crankbrothers, but I don’t blame them for breaking, they had years of extreme use on them, I should have replaced the spindles as a precaution). But I’m not taking any chances with cheap no name ones that don’t have a reputation to loose.
I had an off-brand Chinese pedal do that while on a ride. I just tiggtened it back up as best I could, finished up my ride while being careful with it and then retightened it later with blue Loctite. It’s still in service on one of my daughter’s unicycles and doing fine.
Mine haven’t been damaged yet, but the seal design is probably the worst thing about them.
I have some identical profile pedals from another manufacturer that has the rubber dust seals fitting into the end of the pedal rather than against it - it works great and there’s no risk of seal damage from riding.
Nukeproof’s seal definitely feels like an afterthought in the design.
I tried clipless (crank brothers mallets) and really liked it. But it can be tough to get unclipped and I was accidently getting clipped in when I didn’t want to be. I want to try the magnetic clipless someday.
It really depends on the type of pedals. I think most of the unicyclists that run clipless pedals use SPD’s with SH-56 cleats (multi-directionnal releasing). BTW, Shimano SPD pedals can be set so that they are easy to unclip. To give you some credit about why I say, I now use SPD pedals on all my unicycles:
Clipless on freewheel?!?! You must have hit your head while using them on your dh muni! Jokes aside, you must be extremely good at freewheel to go clipless and then also dh on it, do you have any footage of this?(might inspire me to put some cranks back on my freewheeler)
Off topic, but if you don’t, please do consider selling/loaning it as there’s a great deal of interest in freewheel but very little availability of hubs.
I’ll try and find some footage. It’s not been a long time since I switched to clipless on my freewheel but my friends had a camera for my first training. So I may be able to retrieve the footages
I’d say it’s way easier to have clipless on a freewheel for DH as both of your feet need to stay on the pedals to not fall, but it’s also way more dangerous if you don’t have a serious training.
It’s interesting that clipless is always held in such high esteem by those that have tried it. One day I’ll probably have to give it a go, but I have a feeling it’s not gonna make its way to a freewheel for me anytime soon, I don’t even have pins on my freewheel pedals.
Oh I fully plan on putting that uni back together, but it’s winter where I’m at now and I have enough trouble with that thing when there isn’t ice and snow to slide around on so I borrowed it’s parts for other experiments. There have been a few warm days popping up here and there which made me think of maybe pulling it out again, but it always goes right back to freezing and then the ice appears from the melted snow.
That would be a really bad idea anyway. You need to be very familiar with clipless pedals on fixed unis before going clipless on freewheel. They are harder to unclip as they could theoretically turn with your feet when you try to remove them. So don’t go there anytime soon!
Sadly enough, my successful attempts on featured spots haven’t been filmed so you’ll see a lot of UPDs. Which is pretty great as that’s the most dangerous point with clipless/FW and I managed not to hurt me
As an almost always clipless pedals user on my bikes I immediately see that you have really internalized the movement of the feet which is required to release the shoes from the pedals. This is probably essential for a safe usage on the uni.
I have tried SPDs on my standard uni almost two decades ago. I think at that time it was even more freaky than today, considering the reactions I got back then here in the forum
You definitely seem able to hop out when you want, and are very skilled at freewheeling! It looks like a good brake is quite important, I’ll try to find some decent brake pads at the LBS for mine and get it tuned in really well. Sadly there isn’t really much way to give mine a disc brake since cotterless rules out the spirit crank method and the hub doesn’t have any mounts for a disc, plus a disc brake would probably cost more than the entire thing did. How “practical” is it to freewheel trails compared to fixed? Is it about the same pace?
) but you can see how clipless pedals on my FW aren’t a big issue for me: