Left Hand Thread

Intrinsic Bicycle Pedal

IAman bought some new Intrinsic pedals for his electric bicycle. He had some fancy rat-trap pedals but when taking the bike on the train they kept banging into his shins. The new pedals are rubber all around with a sandpaper like surface top and bottom. Probably weigh a couple ounces more than the old ones, but no one's going to notice on this machine.

He tried to replace them himself but broke his Allen wrench, so he drug it over to my house to see if I would have any better luck. First problem is that the pedal on the left side of the bike has a left hand thread. That's okay, you just tighten it to loosen it, right? But then I find that Allen socket is on the end that is stuck through the crank, so now which way do you turn it? Well from the far side of the bike, you want the screw to go away from you, like it's screwing in, so if it was a right hand thread you would turn it clockwise, but it's a left hand thread, so you turn it counter-clock wise. It didn't help that Igor the invincible had tightened these pedals so even with an eighteen inch breaker bar I couldn't budge them in either direction. I had to put my fifty year old cheater pipe over the end of a ratchet wrench to break it loose. You really want to be sure of which direction you should be going when using a big wrench like this.

The motor was loose. It has a ring that goes around the crank bearing so it's not going anywhere, but it should not be moving around. There were four washers between the motor and its mounting bracket. Taking out one allowed the big ring nut to properly clamp down on the bracket.