Bontrager Street shoes and CB Quattro pedals

pmurph

I have bought a pair of Crank Brothers Quattro SL pedals and a pair of Bontrager Street shoes as my first clipless set-up. However, on receiving them, I find that they are not compatible (at least on first inspection), despite my best efforts to ensure that they would be when I was researching what to buy. The Bontrager website states that the shoes have a "2-hole SPD-style cleat attachment" (http://bontrager.com/model/07820/en), which I thought would be OK with CB products. You can see the soles here:

http://www.bikeradar.com/gear/catego...shoes-09-33900

The soles are made of rubber and the holes don't even have any thread, so I don't see how you could screw any cleat into them.

Does anyone have experience with these shoes? Can anyone see what the problem is from the info provided. Am I just being a complete dunce? Can I get these pedals/shoes to work together or will I have to buy new pedals/shoes? Any advice would be appreciated.

Cheers,

Paul

andrewjoseph

from the pictures I've seen it looks like you type of shoe where you have to cut away the oval rubber section to get at the nut the spd cleats bolt into.

to check that there is a nut, take out the insole and look for a metal plate with 4 threaded holes. there should also be elongated 'holes', so you can get the optimum cleat position.

what do the instructions with the shoe say?

pmurph

Thanks, Andrew. Annoyingly, there were no instructions with the shoes.

Is it common to have to cut a section? This seems a bit pointless. I did have feel under the insole, but I'll check again tonight.

k-dog

Very common as some people just like cycling shoes to use on flat pedals. I've had 2 or 3 pairs of shoes that you had to cut the ruber out of to get at the attachments - just use a sharp knife and take your time.

crankycrank

Pretty common to have to cut out part of the sole on the softer walking/riding shoes. Mainly for the folks who don't use clipless pedals and don't want to be bothered with open holes in the bottom of their shoes. There usually is some sort of pattern marking where to cut. Sometimes you have to cut beyond the pattern for your particular cleats.

andrewjoseph

Wot they said

fatfreddy

I also tried a pair of CB Quattros with SPD shoes (Spesh Tahos). Wouldn't work for me and I changed the pedals for proper SPDs. As the others have said it's normal to cut away the oval or rectangle that hides the cleat.

If you look on the CB website you'll see that they recommend cutting away even more than the oval with recessed SPD shoes. I tried this but they still would not release properly.

Quattros are not really designed for shoes with recessed cleats. You can buy washers that raise the cleat a bit but that means you end up walking on them - which defeats the object of a recessed cleat.

I took mine back to the shop and swapped them for Shimano A520s which work just fine.

You have to decided - do you want recessed cleats or not? If so - change the pedals. If not, then change the shoes. In my view your current combination of shoe/pedal isn't going to work properly. I found this out the hard way.

FF

pmurph

Hmm, food for thought, FF. Perhaps I should just get a pair of road shoes.

Anyway, you are all correct in stating that I need to cut a section away to reveal the threaded inserts – Bontrager customer services confirmed this and said that there should have been instructions in the box.

Thanks, everyone, for the advice.

sjkidd2002

Yes - bought a pair of these and had similar questions about how to fix the cleats. No instructions in the box etc

Basically what you have to do is score around the 'oval' shape in the sole with a sharp knife - you dont need to cut very deep - just less than 1mm.

If you feel around the sole of the shoe you will see that the 'oval' bit of the sole is not even glued on - its just tacked in place with a small bit of adhesive around the edge.

Then you can lift/prise off the oval to reveal the cleat screw-in plate behind the slots already put in the shoe for you.

Keep the rubbery ovals in case you dont like cleats and you can probably use a contact adhesive to stick them back on if needs.

chillyHW

All above's right you guys (sjkidd2002 et al) although I came accross this issue via my SPD cleat screws being too short. Here's what I did today:

1. Take out the inside sole
2. take off the black adhesive tape covering the SPD counter plate with threaded wholes
3. cut out the 'oval" shaped -which looks almost like a thick Swiss cross- lower sole that is suggested by a groove
4. this will reveal the hardbody plate needed to mount the cleats directly using the standard (short) SPD screws

No instructions whatsover on or in the Bontrager shoe box. So their customer service don't know their own products...