After reading a lot of people on the forum harping on about foot retention, I was reminded about a friend of mine telling about riding “death pedals” on the track when he was a kid.
So I did a search on them and found some stuff on theseCinelli M71s (from 1970). Anyway I don’t know if this is interesting to others on here but it was to me. Personally even the idea of them freaks me out and reminds me of how soft we’ve become.
I’m sure this has no doubt been a thread already but, meh, whatever.
My first few times riding fixed on the road were with these pedals. Thanks dad, way to scare a little kid.
My dad used to race with on the road with them, back in the late 70s. He worked at a bike shop at the time and was pretty excited about the new ‘clipless’ idea.
With the M71s, to unclip you had to lean down and tap the little plastic tab in, or else you couldn’t get your foot out. Not too bad racing on country roads without traffic lights. Horrible idea in the city. They were perfect for the track though - similar to the track-lock system on modern Keywin pedals to avoid unclipping, except the M71s were better designed I think.
I have some photos of the ones that were on my Kuwahara, after they’d seen about 20-odd years of use:
More here.