Dartmoor Fever Pedals - Tested

Oct 12, 2011 at 16:43

What is it: Dartmoor's Fever platform pedals use a minimalist open body design that keeps the weight down to 375 grams without resorting to a titanium axle, along with a dual concave shape and sixteen pins per pedal to keep your feet in place. Their 16mm body height may not be the thinnest available, but the Fever's 90 x 100mm platform sits in closer to the crank arm than any other platform we've tested, improving clearance and lowering their Q factor (the width between each pedal measured parallel to the bottom bracket axle) . They are available in green, blue, red, black, graphite, white, gold and violet, and sell for $95 USD.


The details: The Fever pedals may look like a standard platform pedal from afar, but a closer look reveals that they are actually quite different from the run of the mill catalog platforms out there. Instead of making use of a flat pedal body, or even a concave shape that has been proven to help hold your foot in place, the Fever's body features a pronounced double concave to each side, both forward and aft of the pedal axle. Further helping to hold your feet in place are eight hex head traction pins per side, with the leading and trailing three being threaded in from the opposing face.

If you were to take the Fevers apart you'll find a tapered steel axle (there is no titanium option) and a combination of two sealed bearings at the outer end, along with an inboard DU bushing. Dartmoor offers rebuild kits, something that we'd like to see from more companies, and performing maintenance is about as easy as you could hope for.

One of the Fever's most obvious features, or lack thereof, is the absence of wrench flats on the pedal axle. Dartmoor designed the pedals to use an 8mm hex wrench at the inner end of the axle for installation and removal, but unlike a lof of pedals that employ a large inboard sealed bearing in place of the wrench flats, the Fever pedal bodies have been shifted in slightly to take up that space. At 90 x 100mm, the size of the pedal body is similar to other options out there, but they certainly do sit in tighter to the bike, lowering their Q factor by roughly 10mm per side. Is this a good thing? It really does depend on the rider, but it will improve pedal clearance no matter who you are.


Performance: Traction is the name of the game when talking about platform pedals. A properly designed set of platforms will not only never have you wishing for more grip, but also allow you to reposition your feet without feeling as if you need to lift them completely off of the pedal body. The Fever pedals perform well in this regard, striking a good balance between the two, even though the traction provided by the pins and body shape may not rival that of some other designs. The open body shape allowed mud and debris to clear quite well, although we haven't really had this be a problem on any other pedals either, but we did find ourselves wishing for a wider body than the 90mm wide platform - it was easy to position your feet so that the outer edge of the shoes overhung the pedal by too much for our liking. We can't say that we suffered from less pedal strikes thanks to the lowered Q factor of the Fever pedals, but the bodies have held up well despite the few that we have had.

Where the Fever pedals may be ideal is on an all-mountain bike. How so? At 375 grams, despite not using a titanium axle or magnesium body trickery, they are light enough to keep the gram counters happy. But even more important than that is how easy they spin - much smoother and easier than the majority of other pedals out there. Just one flick with your finger will have them turn a number of times, and there feels to be next to no seal drag in the design. We may love the lack of resistance, but our Fevers do have a slight bit of play in them already, possibly down to the same reason. While some riders prefer pedals with a bit of resistance for dirt jumping or on their downhill rig, we'll choose a set that turn free of resistance any day.


We do take one major issue with the Fever pedals that we couldn't get seem to get past. Their low Q factor is nice, possibly helping to lessen the amount of pedal strikes, but that same tight Q factor had us hitting the heels of our shoes on both the crank arms and the chainstays of any bike that we tried them on. It would happen while climbing, descending and while just spinning on flat ground unless we made a conscious effort to move our feet out slightly from where they seemed to want to come to rest naturally on the Fever pedals. This ended up bothering us enough in the long run that we ended up removing them from the bike, a shame considering their relatively light weight, how easy they spin and the reasonable amount of grip that they provide.

Pinkbike's take:

www.dartmoor-bikes.com