Mobius Infinity Pedals

General Reviews
1

Mobius Cycling is the company behind the Infinity Pedal.

I signed onto the Kickstarter for this product back in March 2014 and received my pedals in October 2015, so a long time between dates.

I went with the “Everything but the Kitchen sink” option, so Titanium shaft & Kickstarter Purple, plus the bonus hoody, t-shirt and drink bottle.

Pedals:

Cleats:

Complete set:

It didn’t take long to change over from the Shimano MTB cleats to the Mobius Infinity cleats. The Shimano cleat bolts use a 4mm allen key and Mobius a 3mm. Thye Mobius cleats are also marked with an L and an R. If you install them incorrectly you have to disengage the foot inwards towards the frame, not ideal.

BTW the Shimano cleats weighed in at:

Once I installed the Mobius cleats I had to bend out the leading edge of the cleat sides to touch the tread on the shoe. I used a small shifter to do this. The pic shoes the left shoe, with the toe at the bottom and you can see the two cleat sides bent outwards per the instructions supplied.

The pedals were also an easy install, the Shimano PD-520’s I was using came off with a 6mm allen key and weighed in at:

So a combined total of:

So I’m saving over half the weight by using the new system. Bonus.

The Mobius Infinity pedal uses an 8mm allen key but lacks any identifier as to which pedal is the right or left, a minor flaw IMO. A quick look at the thread determined which pedal was for which side, so with a smear of grease on the thread they were installed.

I jumped on the bike and it took a few goes to work out the difference in clipping in, it’s a toe in slide, rather than the push down from the top Shimano system. Disengaging is easy enough with a normal outward turn of the heel completing the job, same as what I am currently used to with the Shimano system.

//youtu.be/uY4Sv35dKaU

Initial Concerns:
[ul]
[li]Very long time between signing up and receiving the pedals[/li][li]Lack of L/R on the pedal themselves[/li][li]Small pedal - possibly hotspot cause, but the larger cleat area may alleviate that[/li][li]No opportunity to buy more pedals/cleats off the company website at the moment[/li][/ul]

Now that everything is all setup I’ll be using them on my commuting bike, so a number of stoppage times at lights for clipping in and out. I’ll come back and update this after a few rides with some feedback as to how I’ve found them.

2

Post ride feedback - 90kms of commuting and 10kms of family outing towing a trailer so far
The clipping in is definately not as easy as SPD, the sliding your foot over the pedal to get it to engage the cleat can easily lead to you slipping straight past and hooking the pedal up on the heel of your shoe, or in my case I managed to go straight past the pedal and had it smash into my right achilles as my left foot was clipped in and rotating the cranks. initial clipping in feels like you have, but it’s just the pedal meeting up with the angled outer plates on the cleat and it takes a bit more effort to get them to click into the actual locked position, it’s easy to slip straight past engaged too, a taller end wall on the cleat would help with that, but it would in turn lead to a lot more metal on ground contact when not on the bike.

It also makes me feel more like a road bike rider when taking off at the lights, with those hubbard like misclips. To compensate I now just take off, get the pedal centred in the middle of my foot, hooking it up against my heel until I get some good momentum going and then attempt to clip in.

The cleats stick out further than my shoe grip, which means walking on tiles and wood leads to damage to those surfaces. Also walking up my front concrete path from the house to the road becomes a little more of a delicate operation so I don’t slip on the metal cleats.

My shoes feel well and truly clipped in when pedalling. I tried out of the saddle back foot reefing upwards pedalling to see if I could get them to unclip, but couldn’t. I tried heel down pedalling to see if that backward/downward force would unclip, but it didn’t. However it is so easy to unclip when moving your heel outwards from the crank that it feels like there is little to no spring pressure holding you in place. It’s a significantly lighter than the lightest Shimano SPD setting. I clip out when stretching my leg, something I don’t experience with the SPD’s.

Haven’t had any feeling of hotspots as yet, so something to keep an eye out for.

Next thing to test them on is my Pivot 429C dually and see how they handle some singletrack roughness.

Would love for their platform pedal clip on attachment to be made available. My family outing on the weekend would have been more enjoyable in a pair of thongs on the platforms than me wearing my socks and shoes, especially when off the bike. I brought my thongs along and wore them when wandering the markets but changed back again for the return ride.

3

Very interesting read! Keen to hear how you go with unintended unclilpping swinging those hips on the pivot. Sounds like they miss the mark so far?

4

Out of interest from someone who only uses spd’s on my sw8 fixie…was there something you didn’t like about them that you thought these would fix? Or was it just a case of “hey that looks cool, I’ll give it a go”. As JP says, seems like they’re not really doing it for you at the moment.

In fairness sometimes my spd cleats come past the tread on my shoes, but they seem to have a pretty low profie and I run the cleat slammed pretty far back.

5

Sounds like this was the main selling point (from watching the video), any benefits other than the lighter weight (especially given that you can get mtb pedals that weigh under 200g)?

6

JP, still finding there’s not enough spring tension, lack of adjustability means I inadvertently clip out often.

Dave, was a looks cool, give it a crack thought process.

ratbert, only benefit I can see is you can clip in from any point, unlike single sided Shimano Trekking pedals or double sided SPD’s, so it’s living up to its infinity name in that respect.

Clipping in I find I am always getting the pedal to meet the front of the cleat first but it doesn’t have enough chamfered/angled edge to make the pedal slip up into the cleat locking slot, so you think you’re doing the right thing but then your whole foot slips off the pedal and you have to try again.

That being said I am definately better at clipping into these now then when I first started but it’s not as easy as SPD IMO.

7

Interesting but why would anyone bring a new pedal to the market without real benefits? I don’t really get it to be honest, why did you sign up for it in the first place? I am all in for new ideas but I don’t get the one that’s behind this system.

8

Have you seen much of the bike industry on kickstarter?

9

I mostly ignore them and I guess this is why.