Review: 45NRTH Heiruspecs Flat Pedals

Heiruspecs is an unusual name for a flat pedal, as it seems to be entirely derived from a Minnesota hip hop band. What these pedals have to do with hip hop, I don’t know, but 45NRTH do also come from the same US state, and they get plenty of snow there, which these pedals are specifically designed for.

Bearing that in mind, I gave the pedals a little credit despite their being equipped with my least favourite pin type – squat little hex studs. Combined with slight concavity though, I didn’t find them too lacking in grip; I just had to keep thinking about what the pedals were designed for.

It’s worth stressing that 45NRTH bill these pedals as “fat bike specific”, and indeed their website is filled with pictures of smiling fatbikers playing in the snow. We didn’t exactly have the bikes or conditions to test the Heiruspecs like that here, but we did have Britain’s one plentiful resource: Mud! As advertised, the generous cutouts in the Heiruspecs bodies do clear it well.

The bodies of the Heiruspecs are CNCed down to a collection of quite slender struts, creating massive cutouts both vertically and horizontally through the pedal. The weight of these alloy bodies on Cr-Mo axles is just 352 grams. While we didn’t have any dings big enough to bend bits of them during our test, it’s worth bearing this in mind – these are not really designed for high stress applications like freeride, dirtjumping or downhill, but more for cranking out mile after mile in adverse weather.

Not that I do anything like freeride, but I did take them down something with a lot of loose rocks and 2 – 3 foot drops, and as I kind of expected, ended up occasionally losing them, hitting my bum on my seat then balance biking short sections. After that ride, I decided to just use them for conditions and the kind of riding they were more suited to. With that kind of discipline, they gave me no trouble at all.

The pin layout is deliberately non-agressive to work with the kind of soft rubber, flat soled boots people are more likely to wear for cold weather riding and racing. The body thickness varies from 17.5mm at the edges to 18.5mm over the axle, with any concavity provided by the pin heights. There are no centre pins, just pins at the edge, and the drop from the top of the pins to the top of the axle bulge is 3.8mm. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but for the sole of a shoe to sag into, it’s quite a bit.

Platforms are roughly 100mm by 100mm, so not the biggest on test, but probably comfortable a few sizes either side of the average UK men’s shoe size (9). Most pins are on the outer edge of the pedal, and between the crank end ones and the middle pins there’s quite a large gap, so unfortunately if you have smaller feet you might find not all of the pins fit under them and a smaller or more plentifully pinned pedal might suit you better.

Overall: The Heiruspecs are definitely a little niche, and 45NTRH make no pretense otherwise. If you do a lot of miles in mud or snow, these are great at clearing it.

Review Info