How to destroy a LOOK pedal as it won't come off anyway

Question

I've tried everything, from brute force, WD40 overnight, heat from a gas torch (trying not to damage the carbon crank itself), to using an extended arm for extra force.

Nothing will remove this darn pedal! The 8mm hex hole is now slipping so there is no more grip. Even the alloy wrench started to bend!

Ok, here is the low down.

Colnago C40 frame with Campagnolo Record Ultra Torque carbon cranks. Left pedal comes off easy, but the right drive pedal is fooked! Both pedals are LOOK Classics. Both were put on 2 years ago with grease, so they should have been easy to unwind. I suspect I annoyed someone on the bunch races and he went over and over tightened the pedal in vengeance! Bastard! I have an idea who it was too!

Anyway, the question is - how do I kill it!?

I am thinking nice clean fine metal blade on a hack-saw, cut pedal off, then drill middle outwards and hopefully it will unscrew itself without unscrewing the thread attached to the crank!

Any other suggestions?

Thanks

Answer 1

Heating the pedal is not going to help here. Cool the pedal might. But if the hex is stripped too late.

Use penetrating oil like Liquid Wrench over WD40 for this. I would have soaked it two days in penetrating oil before I went brute force. The risk of brute force is you that you strip out the crank.

Use a drill press as it is really hard to center by hand. If you get the bit big enough it will fracture the pedal axle.
But you don't want the bit big enough to scar the crank.

I would see if you can get the pedal part of the pedal off and have enough of the axle to grab on to with a pipe wrench. Soak it for 2 days in penetrating oil before you go at it with a pipe wrench.

Answer 2

Unless the pedals have bonded to the thread in the cranks, a longer lever is usually the way. As that seems to have failed, I'd get the cranks off, pop them in a vice and drill the cranks out.

Answer 3

You say "The 8mm hex hole is now slipping so there is no more grip." So at this point you're trying to save the crank set. Depending on the age of the bike the bottom bracket may be incompatible with newer crank sets, so it may be fairly important to you to salvage the crank set.

If you take the crank to a machine shop you will likely pay more than the cost of a better crank set to remove the pedal, so I would not consider that a good option.

The right (passenger side) crank comes off by turning the pedal counter-clockwise when standing on the right (passenger side) of the bike. Note that if your pedals use Allen wrenches, you're probably standing on the left (driver side) of your bike when trying to remove the pedal, and that will mean that you need to turn clockwise to remove the pedal.

• With that in mind, easy outs or drilling out the pedal are going to be further tightening it.
• If you were previously turning the wrong way then there is hope that the the Allen won't be sheered for turning the right way. I've had luck placing a piece of paper over the Allen hole and then hammering the Allen in such that the paper helps to form the original Allen socket.
• If you were previously turning the right way, your options are very limited, you can try hammering a Torx of slightly larger size into the Allen hole. That's work one time for me. Beyond that you'll need to drill a hole through the body of the pedal, say screwdriver size, insert a screwdriver and twist it off that way.

In any case you'll want to remove the crank and set it in a vise. And hose that bolt down with penetrating oil. You've only got .67 shot at this so make it good.