I’ve been working with the HT AE05 pedals lately. I just upgraded the pins. Now I’m looking at the spin.
Out of the box, these pedals are very bound up. They have an insane amount of resistance to them. I wanted to figure out how to improve that.
These are simple bushing pedals with a dynamic thrust bearing. They seem solid enough with close tolerances.
Part of what’s slowing them down so much is the grease that was used in assembly. It’s very thick and sticky. It closely resembles optical mechanism grease. That’s not what you use when you want something to freely spin.
I replaced the grease with some Maxima Waterproof grease. This isn’t the thinnest grease that I have but it’s significantly thinner than stock.
Preload adjustment seems very easy to get wrong and have change in use. I’m going to keep my eye on this. I ended up with the lightest preload I could attain while also eliminating discernable play.
The action of the pedal was improved and is better. Not as much as I’d like though. I’m going to run these for a few more rides and see if they free up some.
Note that some of the photos are missing the second o-ring in the stack. Don’t be misled. There are two in series.
