THROUGH THE GRINDER

Sun-kissed and lightly powdered with trail dust, these products have had a pretty easy time of it over the last few months… As if! Wet, gritty and crunchy has been the riding style this summer and this lot has been there with us.

WORDS BY THE SINGLETRACK GRINDER TEAM

PICTURES BY ROB

RITCHEY WCS PEDALS

Price: WCS Trail £140.00, WCS XC £125.00

From: Paligap, paligap.cc // Tested: Three months

After Shimano came out with a fully formed, near-on perfect clipless pedal system 26 years ago, it seemed that everyone else might as well give up then. Ritchey, however, in keeping with Tom Ritchey’s quest for better tools to race with, had one of the best alternatives in those early days. It took the double-sided pedal and stripped away anything that wasn’t truly essential to leave a lightweight and perfectly durable component.

This innovation has continued, with Ritchey always looking to reduce weight without compromising efficiency or durability, and these two pedals are the latest in the line.

Both pedals come under Ritchey’s top-flight ‘WCS’ marque, meaning that they’re race-ready (and meaning that in some cases there are cheaper alternatives in the range). The Race pedal is as you’d imagine – pared down and as light as possible, while the Trail pedal sacrifices some weight in return for a bigger platform and some protection of the mechanism. The Race WCS pedals weigh 300g a pair (without cleats) and the Trail pedals come in at 350g.

The pedals both come with Ritchey cleats which are close, but not exact facsimiles of Shimano cleats. If you have both systems then there’s a certain amount of interchangeability between the two, but with variation in the relative release tensions, so double check you can unclip if you’re running one in the other as the tension will be a few clicks higher or lower than the other. The smooth axles use only an 8mm Allen key to secure, which allows good torque in the workshop, but pick your multitool wisely as not all of them have this bigger size.

Even backed off fully, there’s a reassuring ‘clunk’ when you engage. It’s a firm feel and again the race heritage can be felt here – racers don’t like to unclip unexpectedly. The Race pedal is easy to find and engage with though; unclipping needs a firm movement, but is consistent every time.

The Trail pedal is obviously a bigger pedal – more long and slim than wide though – and it’s easy to find in a hurry, offering a decent amount of support even if you’re not clipped in. Clipping in again takes a firm motion and this will vary on the tread of your shoes. Talking of shoes, when using the Trail pedals with chunky trail shoes or winter boots, the narrowness of the pedal is felt and, while it does keep your feet inboard and the bike’s width low for those slot-canyon descents, I found a fair amount of shoe rub on the cranks as the axle isn’t particularly long.

Both are great pedals for the job and the combination of sealed bearings and bushings runs free. However, they will always face stiff competition from even Shimano’s entry-level units, such is the Big S’s dominance of the field.

Overall: Quality race-worthy pedals from Mr Ritchey’s stable. They’re good enough for Nino Schurter, and he’s pretty quick, right?

Chipps

WELDTITE

TUBELESS REPAIR KIT

Price: £5.99 or so // From: Weldtite, weldtite.co.uk

Tested: Ten months

In the earlier days of tubeless tyres, repairing a hole in your tubeless set-up involved pulling the tyre off, locating the hole, cleaning the inside of that bit of the tyre and patching it with an inner tube patch. Then you had to reverse the process and get the tyre mounted and inflated again. Or you put in a tube to get you to the end of the ride. This then left the very unpleasant task of removing and cleaning a slime-covered inner tube, before doing the whole tyre-fixing thing.