How to Overhaul Shimano Pedals

How to Overhaul Shimano pedals In order to get a Shimano pedal apart, you have to unscrew the axle cartridge from the pedal body. They are threaded the opposite ways so in other words this is the right pedal, it threads on that way, but this is left hand thread. More common Shimano method is this way, where you need a special tool that goes on like that and unscrews it. This is a left pedal. Then the pedal body threads are right hand threaded, so that’s what the guts of the pedal look like. There are bearings here and here, so what you have to do is take the bearings out and grease them and put them back in. This type of Shimano pedal no longer has the plastic insert here. So you can see the system is the same, except this has the plastic, and then this has the aluminum one. This one looks quite clean. There is no reason to overhaul it, so I am just going to insert this back in there. Again, it’s left hand thread. It’s obviously not that big a deal to take one of these apart and look and see what things look like in there. Make sure its working okay. This one, the grease is pretty dirty, and I am going to go ahead and overhaul it, 10 millimeter on this one, seven millimeter on this, and you want the thinnest 10 millimeter you can get. That was kind of getting to be a sort of dirty grease there. So that is the bare axle. I am going to check this seal here, make sure it’s in good shape. This little barrel here has a bearing cap on each end. That’s where the bearings are going to sit. You can see, these threads are pretty toasted, and that’s a reason the higher inch monos have aluminum one of these instead of a plastic one. This is the entry way for dirt into this system, so it can work its way in there and get on those bearings. This is where this barrel sits. This should be properly up. Bearing cone here, clean that up. We are going to just clean these by just rolling them around, and we can start reassembling our pedal. That goes on like that. Then we are going to have bearings sitting in there so I am going to do this. First of all, I am going to just clump a bunch of grease in here. Now, you either need to use the tip of your greased finger, or a magnetic screwdriver is also useful. There, that’s what I want; see how it’s sitting flushed down here. I don’t know if you saw that little rubber, little black rubber piece that was on the spindle. One purpose of that is to keep these bearings from falling down inside of this barrel. I am going to put this cone on there, just where it is in contact with those bearings, before it started piling them up. Then I push outward from this barrel; tighten it in the rest of the way. I have good action, so got it on the first try it looks like. Grab a little more grease around it, just kind of as a barrier for stuff to get in there. Again, this is a left pedal, so this cartridge would be right hand threaded. Basically you get it. Tie as you can just hold it by hand, and pedal moves freely and beautifully now.