Pedal Strikes when Turning

[John Hawrylak]

Past and current Rivendell models with 700C wheels have Bottom Bracket Drops (BBD) in the 75 to 80 mm range.  The exceptions seem to be: GusBothWilson at 70mm, Legalos at 70mm, and Quickbeam at 73mm.

Is it common to have pedal strikes while turning??  Perhaps, you avoid pedaling when turning or cornering or hold the cranks near 3 and 9 o'clock.

John Hawrylak

Woodstown NJ

[ted]

On any corner with the slightest chance of a pedal strike I’m either pedaling or have the outside foot down. Pedals at 3 and 9 is strictly for going straight (or sometimes through wide sweeping turns on fast descents).

[Daniel M]

I had an early orange Waterford canti-braked single top tube Hillborne in the early 2010s. The tradeoff of the stable high-speed handling was that the bike needed to be leaned really far to make a quick tight turn. The combination of this, the low bottom bracket, and my love of pedaling through turns meant I got A LOT of pedal strike. The most of any bike I've owned. And this was with either 165 or 167.5mm cranks (can't remember which).

This is not to disparage the bike at all, rather to simply state that my example was not a good candidate for pedaling through tight turns.

Daniel M
Berkeley, CA

[Clark Fitzgerald]

What Ted wrote. I almost never get pedal strikes from turning, only from rocks :)

Fixed gears require different technique- you lean your body, not the bike.

[James / Analog Cycles]

Crit bikes have high BB's because you need to pedal thru turns.  Riv style frames are not made for that.  You just don't pedal in turns.  Wide platform pedals don't help either.  

-James / Analog Cycles / Fan of high bottom brackets and short cranks.

[John Hawrylak]

James

Thanks for the clarification.  This was what I was looking for, but probably did not ask too well.

John Hawrylak

Woodstown NJ

[Scott Calhoun]

Plus one regarding wide platform pedals being a contributing factor. I rarely have had pedal strike except when using the VP platforms that Riv sold. If you want to pedal a Riv through corners, you'll probably want a Roadeo, Ram, or Roadini with the biggest tires you can get and clipless or other lower profile pedals. On my Ram, I used to pedal through corners all the time without issue. That said, I wasn't leaning into corners anywhere near as aggressively as I used to in a Crit. 

Scott Calhoun