Introduced in 1992, the A525 is the third pair introduced by Shimano and up to that time, the least expensive set of one sided Road SPD pedals. Unlike the Dura-Ace and Ultegra SPD pedals, the A525 use the SM-SH50/51 series cleats. The price and weight reductions over the other SH50/51 cleated pedals, the M737 and M525, are owed to the fact that these pedals have just one clipless system on each pedal and therefore aren't reversible. It seems that Shimano's intent was that they be used as road pedals providing the "Trojan horse" needed to break their SPD pedal system into the Road market. Remember, Shimano's previous road clipless pedals are based on the French LOOK clipless system and their full strength SPD road pedals use the SH70/71 cleat. But, many mountain bike riders have adopted these pedals for weight and cost reasons, and they were introduced with accents in the young, hip and "in", mountain bike, Lavender color. For mountain use, their drawback is that they are built as a platform type pedal, with no openings from the upper surface of the pedal to the ground, so there is no practical way for dirt or mud to be evacuated from the pedal in use. The body is made of cast aluminum alloy with three tapped holes on the top for the cleat saddle to bolt to, and two other tapped bolt holes for the SPD system itself to bolt to the rear of the body. The interior is tapped with threads for the single unit spindle and bearing assembly to thread into.
The adjustable spring tension system is housed in a painted Lavender molded aluminum housing. The spring tension is adjustable using a 3mm allen head bolt at the bottom of the SPD mechanism and has a visual tension indicator in the form of a gauged moving red line at the rear of the pedal. The A525 pedal uses the same spindle and bearing assembly found in the M737. The plastic sleeve is molded of Grey rather than Black plastic, and is greased with a milky white grease instead of the clear green grease used in the M737. The Shimano A525 pedals set comes with SM-SH50 cleats and the mounting hardware required for them, also included is the TL-PD40 spindle/bearing removal tool. The pedals are available only in an all Silver finish. The pair weighs 389 1/2 grams. The Black cleat set, with hardware weighs 63 grams.
Pedal Prices in catalog
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