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Unpopular opinion: greasing pedal threads is a waste and I did it for 15 years
I used to slather grease on every pedal thread I installed, thought I was being smart, protecting the crank, making future removal easy. Then last spring a guy rolled into my shop in Tucson with a creaking crank arm on a bike I'd built up two years before, and when I pulled the pedal to check, the grease had turned into this gritty black paste that was basically lapping compound. I looked it up and talked to an old timer named Wes who's been turning wrenches since the 70s, and he said the whole grease thing is backwards on modern alloy cranks because the grease holds grit and the pedal never gets tight enough to stay put. I started installing dry with a torque wrench at spec, 35 newton meters, and I have not had a single pedal back out or seize since. The threads look cleaner on removal too, no black mush. I know half this forum is gonna tell me I'm gonna weld a pedal into a crank someday, but I'm 200 plus installs in with zero issues. Anyone else gone dry, or am I the only one who drank the grease kool aid for that long?
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