I was riding home today (with clipless pedals; SPD) and noticed my ankle was twisting strangely with each rotation of my legs. I had just gotten to the top of a massive hill. I pulled off to the sidewalk and inspected my pedal.
Turns out that the pedal had begun to loosen (perhaps it was never tight enough?) and the force of me pedaling on it had bent it a bit. I was quite upset because I was still 20 minutes away from home.
I tried getting the pedal off, but I was unable to loosen it (with a wrench, or hex key from the side) What should I do? I'm thinking of taking a powerdrill and forcing it out. Will this be an okay solution? Will my crank arm be damaged at all?
Here is a picture
as you can see the bend is very imperceptible. You can really tell when you pedal on it though. From the picture you can also see how loose the pedal got when it started to bend. Do you guys think there is hope in saving the crank?
Thanks for the advice guys, I'm going to take this to my LBS and see what they say. I'll let you know what happens!
EDIT: Turns out that the pedals were not installed tight enough and it resulted in some cross-threading. My LBS said that the crank wasn't damaged too much. He re-threaded the crank and said that it should be okay, but that I should watch out in case that happened again.