EDCO 3AX £249.99 › Will swaying pedals rock your world?
“YOUR PEDALS SHOULD adapt to your body, not the other way round.” That’s the philosophy behind the 3ax (“tri-axe”) pedals from Edco, a unique design that introduces a sideways rocking motion (“sway”) in addition to traditional lateral float – the amount in degrees your foot can move before releasing from the pedal.
These chunky pedals take a Lookpattern cleat and weigh 385g a pair, plus 70g for cleats and mounting hardware. On the road, they feel less odd than we anticipated. Although the pedal design allows your feet more freedom of movement than a conventional pedal, it’s hard to detect the sway in normal pedalling. We tried riding with an Edco pedal on one side and a standard Look on the other, and didn’t notice a significant difference once clipped in.
We also couldn’t detect any particular qualitative benefit, and they displayed one rather irritating characteristic: low bearing friction is clearly desirable in a pedal, but our Edcos spun so freely that it hampered clipping in. Like many single-sided pedals, they tend to hang upside down, and flipping them upright requires a particularly delicate bit of footwork, which we frequently fluffed.
Clipping out is generally uneventful, but we had an intermittent issue with one of our pedals refusing to release, which seemed to be provoked by contamination from mud. In fairness to the 3axs, this was likely a result of us getting a little ambitious in our off-tarmac forays, usage for which they aren’t really designed.
After a few months of testing our pedals were looking the worse for wear, with much of the black finish worn away where the cleats make contact. There was play in the sway mechanism, enough that the pedal body was starting to wear a groove in the spindle housing.
We can’t help but wonder if the 3axs are the answer to a question no one was really asking. They make sense if you’re convinced by the research behind them (see Inside Info boxout), or if you have a specific biomechanical issue that you think sway might address. Otherwise, it seems that the downsides might outweigh the benefits. They’re not light, they’re expensive, and we found them mildly awkward in everyday use.