I built up a very nice Scott CX bike,which I'm dead pleased with. First ride out on Saturday and noticed that there is about an inch of pedal overlap between my foot and front wheel. There isn't alot I can do to overcome it. i.e cleats are as far forward as I can get away with, I could move from 172.5's down to 170 cranks but I doubt 2.5mm will do a great deal other than lighten my wallet, tyres aren't stupid big either. I'm thinking, is this going to cause me any real problems or do lot's of crosser have this problem and it isn't a big issue? The only time I think it might be is in slow speed turns, or am I wrong? Over to you to discuss…..

Is it a small frame?
TBH you don't get that many slow speed turns in cross, if you do you just have to make sure that if it's a tight left your left foot is forward and vice versa.
Never suffered in any races, generally go as wide as poss to keep the speed going.

you need to be going pretty slowly to turn the bars enough to catch your toes. Don't worry about it. My road and cross bikes both have this and it has never caused me a problem. Wouldn't really happen if i had smaller feet i guess.

(now i've said this i am guaranteed to catch my toes and crash horribly! )

My road bike is an old eddy merckx with loads of two overlap.
Freaked me out at first, but never caused me any problems.
I think all bikes used to have overlap to some degree, howvever health and safety concerns forced most comapneis to reduce the overlap.
J.

I had this when I first rode my Kona Paddy Wagon, I then experimented with turning the bars with my foot forward and figured if I was in the position where my toe would touch the tyre then I'd probably have other things to be worried about!

Its the kind of thing that freaks you right out at first, then as you get used to the bike it becomes a complete non-issue.

Two of my frames have had this, a paddy wagon and an old tourer. Both had HUGE overlap, one I discovered on my first spin in the carpark behind my flat, spinning the bike around I caught my foot and went straight down onto the deck. On the tourer I discovered it while weaving through traffic, though managed to stay on as the bike stalled.

Thereon, I never managed to trap my foot again on either machine. You do have to think about it making slow tight turns, but I found it a fairly intuitive technique swap and it was never an issue again really.

I've small Trek X01 crosser….bad overlap but never been a problem

Thanks chaps, good answers and no sarcasm or silly comments from anyone. You all confirmed what I was hoping to hear. A good example to how this forum should be used I think. Many thanks.

My Cervelo has epic toe overlap and has binned me in the street after I got the wobbles in a trackstand once.

Found it on the Genesis Croix de Fer crosser-thing, it's a non issue really, even on twisty slow singletrack in Leigh Woods it was fine.