Weight Weenies

Anyone using these? A few on eBay for 9000s, appreciate any insights past or present.

Not a good material for spindles.

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Look keo blades seem to have no issues with Ti spindles -- at least I can't find many complaints about them..

Appreciate the response, curious what your background is with them...

I've been curious of this too. I've seen them online but not heard much of them.

MyM3Coupe wrote:Not a good material for spindles.

Doesn't speedplay offer a factory pedal with Ti spindles? What do you know that they don't?

paulkilroy wrote:Look keo blades seem to have no issues with Ti spindles -- at least I can't find many complaints about them..

Appreciate the response, curious what your background is with them...

I have thousands of Km's on my very well used(before me) Keo Blade Ti's. Zero issues

MyM3Coupe wrote:Not a good material for spindles.

Similar as others - I have great vibes with Campagnolo Ti spindles pedals. While not answering the question about shimano pedals I just needed to join the others being vocal that Ti spindles are very worthy on pedals.

The difference is in the bearings.

Shimano DA pedals use the spindle as part of the bearing race. Ti isn't a great material for bearing races.

Look pedals use cartridge bearings, which run off their own races and are in turn mounted onto their Ti spindles.

Works great for XTR:

So not a great material for this particular spindle design, not necessarily for pedal spindles in general.

I have a pair of 35$ Ti spindles on my Speedplay Zeros, they have been ridden plenty hard and crashed a couple of times and are holding up just fine.

Very enlightening comments. Thanks to all.

I havent got any personal experience, but when i googled the same question a year ago, the general agreement was, that these chinese titanium spindles for shimano doesn't last and are flexy for those who are not super thin.

Has anyone ever tried to make a titanium spindle with a press-fit steel bearing race? That would allow weight savings without the durability penalty, just a higher cost.

^ to do that, the section would have to be turned down to a smaller diameter - might introduce unwanted flex, or produce a stress riser in the spindle. Ti is not so forgiving of stress risers.

spud wrote:^ to do that, the section would have to be turned down to a smaller diameter - might introduce unwanted flex, or produce a stress riser in the spindle. Ti is not so forgiving of stress risers.

Yes, it would need to be turned down smaller, but not much. If the steel collar can be fully supported it could be made quite thin. Proper heat treating would be key so that it's not too brittle and breaks but hard enough to withstand the bearing loads. It still could be problematic but without knowing the dimensions it's hard to say. Ti tolerates threads and it's tough to produce a worse stress riser than threads I don't see that being the issue that makes this not work.

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I had Ward Ti spindles on my Shimano PD-A600 road SPDs and I got 3,500 miles on them. The play was extreme by this point and they spindles worn just as seen above.

I'm 60kg, and this was purely road use.

So, sadly, back to the steel Shimano ones.

Not felt inclined to try the Chinese shyte that's widely available as they can and will only be worse at best, and unsafe at worst.