Redshift Sports Mousetrap Pedal Adaptors

The Redshift Sports Mousetrap Pedal Adaptors make your SPD pedals any shoe – or even bare feet – friendly in seconds, with no tools. Just as quickly removable, they clip together and pop into a bag or pocket if you’re worried about theft. Put simply, they are genius.

Since the advent of SPD pedals there has been a need to quickly and easily convert them into flat pedals.

Maybe you’re popping to the cafe, heading to the beach in flip flops or lending your bike to a friend. Perhaps you’re bikepacking, the village shop a mile away is about to close, you just knocked over the last of the [insert precious liquid here], your cycling shoes are soaked/muddy and your fluffy camp socks and Crocs are where you want to be right now. What if you could convert your SPDs to flat pedals in a flash and be off?

Shortly after Shimano invented SPDs they invented plastic flat pedal inserts to meet this need. The most recent incarnation is the SM-PD22, but that’s now discontinued – and quite rightly.

It and its predecessors offered a pretty bad user experience. They required tools to fit and remove and being plastic they wore out very quickly. There are plenty of similar products still out there, mind – BBB sells its BPD-90 FeetRest SPD Pedal Adaptors for just £15 – but they still need tools, and are still made of soft plastic.

The issue with needing tools and wearing quickly is that you’re trying to overcome the force needed to push a metal-cleated shoe home, and you then also need to overcome the retaining force capable of sticking a bike to your feet during removal.

What Redshift Sports realised was that smart design and mechanical leverage could solve this problem and remove the need for tools as well.

The premise is simple. Lift up the hinged grey plastic tab, insert the fixed ‘front’ of the faux-cleat into the pedal, then fold the grey tab back down. This engages a wee claw with the rear of the pedal-cleat interface, pulling the Mousetrap down into the pedal.

There’s a spring-loaded cam action that secures it in place, and as you’re then standing on the pedal, there is simply no way it’s possible for it to fall off. You then have a large, serrated surface that is both grippy on shoes of all sorts and friendly on bare feet.

Yes, they cause the pedal to spin upside-down, so you need to flip them back upright to ride. This is quickly learned. Although if it proves a real issue – say, for people with limited ankle flexibility or dexterity – you could just fit a second set to make the pedal dual-sided.

Because the Mousetrap is only 10mm thick and sits down into the SPD mechanism, there’s no noticeable change in stack height, so you won’t need to faff with your seatpost unless you’re now trying to cycle in platform disco boots a la ABBA or KISS (I’m not judging).

The serrations aren’t overly aggressive – these are not a substitute for a pinned pedal, and Redshift Sports advises they are for road or bike path use, not trails. That said, I feel they are being overly-cautious. I rode some fairly sketchy sections and had no issues with grip, but yes, they aren’t as good as pins, obviously.

Removal is just as easy as fitting. Lift the grey tab, lift off, job done. Once the grey tab is closed again after removal, the pedal pair snaps together with the serrated sides – i.e. the muckiest sides – inwards. They can then disappear into a pocket or bag.

The Mousetraps are made from glass-reinforced nylon – think the cage around Shimano’s classic M424 SPD – so durability of the platform is simply not an issue. After six months’ the closing mechanism is showing signs of use, but not of wear – which is great because they don’t appear to be repairable.

You also get a choice of four different colours: black, teal, blue or purple.

After an initial test, the Mousestraps sat on the edge of my workshop bookcase by the door. And they stayed there, because I quickly got used to popping them on to different bikes that needed a test ride during or after repair. I’d say I’ve had them on and off maybe a hundred bikes so far.

For pro bike workshops, the Mousetrap is a no-brainer tool that will allow staff to get out on repaired bikes and put power down without worrying about their slipping feet off the pedals. I could even imagine a cyclocross pit crew having a set in reserve, for if a rider suffers a cleat failure. Another use case could be on an indoor trainer, where you might not want to wear cycling shoes all the time.

I’m sure there will be comments along the lines of, “How hard is it to swap pedals?” As someone who makes money replacing cranks where customers have cross-threaded or repeatedly removed and fitted pedals to the point the alloy crank threads are knackered, I reply, “Not that hard, but way harder than using these things”.

Plus you need to have the right pedal tool to hand. The Mousetraps reduce faff and enable spontaneity and you don’t have to change shoes.

Redshift Sports also says that, “SPD-SL, Look Keo, and Crankbrothers compatible versions will also be released,” and you can sign up on their website to be notified. I can see the SPD-SL ones being especially popular.

There are many use cases where quickly and easily being able to pedal an SPD pedal bike in flat shoes, flip-flops or bare feet would be beneficial. The Redshift Sports Mousetrap Pedal Adaptors meet that need beautifully.

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