Painting spd pedal bodies

[Squibnocket]

I have some M520 pedals that are used and I'm thinking about stripping them down and painting the bodies red for a specific bike build. Has anyone ever attempted this or can anyone recommend a pair of red spd pedals although I doubt if they'll be as good as the Shimano ones.

Thank you

[NUKe]

a number of problems with Painting . Aluminium is difficult to paint. and the Paint on pedals takes a Fair amount of bashing. if your going to the effort of stripping you might be better with Powder coating or dipping.

Crank Brother DH Mallets Are available in Red, but is it the right Red ? Are they better than Shimano? I think so, but it depends on what you want to do with them and whether your prepared to pay almost four times the price. For that you get a better platform with adjustable screws. the egg beater style clip mechanism. And purely personally view better engineering.

https://brink.uk/crank-brothers-mallet-dh-clip-pedals

[pwa]

I wouldn't bother. Whatever paint you use, you are then going to attack it with a metal SPD cleat that will soon have to looking tatty.

(I briefly changed from SPDs to Crank Bros Eggbeaters and found them really difficult to engage, and an axle broke in the middle of a 300k Audax. So I went back to my tried and tested SPDs having learned a valuable lesson.)

[Mike Sales]

I have painted an aluminium tube, part of a boat (red as it happens), with good results. It stood up well to the salty marine environment.
I used an etch primer. A search for etch primer for aluminium gives a choice.
I think the finish paint was epoxy.
Do some research on line!

[Brucey]

IIRC one of the shimano 'DH MTB' SPD models was available in red BITD. If they would work for you, and you can get hold of some of those that would be a good solution?


PD-M636

You can easily buy wellgo SPDs in red (which look a bit like PD-M535?) but I think the bearings use a DU bushing on the inboard side, so not my favourite.

If you are going to refinish pedal bodies (in something tough enough to be worth having, vs cleats), powder coat would be the way. However the masking would be difficult and the cost wouldn't be much less than having a frame refinished, I expect.

cheers

[pwa]

Perhaps you could leave most of the pedal surface naked and just paint panels, the sides being an obvious location where cleat damage is unlikely. That would make masking easy too.

What colour are the cranks? If they are black, M520s have a black option don't they?
https://spacycles.co.uk/m17b0s86p283/SHIMANO-PD-M520

[Brucey]

PD-M520 have three colour options; black, silver (polished not anodised) and white. If you are going to DIY paint, white pedals might be best to start with, but also might look terrible once the paint is damaged and the white starts to show through, depending on the colour scheme of the rest of the bike. They look tatty enough in a single colour once the paint is scuffed....



These are the 'easy option' red wellgo pedals



cheers

[Squibnocket]

Many thanks for everyone's input and suggestions, the white Shimano pedals is the way I was thinking of going but the Welgo pedals may be the way to go. Fortunate to have quite a few bikes so the pedals won't get hammered to quickly, I'll check out the Welgo option.

[rogerzilla]

You don't like the "run in" look?

[Brucey]

FWIW one approach to painting SPDs is to use cheap rattle can paint and just accept it isn't going to last that well, and will need a recoat from time to time.

No real need to mask the chrome bits; the paint will soon fall off those because it won't have stuck well in the first place. If you really want to, the paint can be helped off these bits using a small wire brush, once it is dry. So provided the pedal is clean (not oily) the 'paint job' can be refreshed without any more complicated masking than is required to stop getting paint on the rest of the bike. It takes just a few moments to apply another coat of paint this way once the pedal starts to look a bit tatty, so this isn't particularly burdensome even if you have to do it two or three times a year.

cheers