SilverSteve

I have two classic ten speed road bikes whose pedals are totally stuck or siezed to the alloy pedal arms. Arrrgghhh..! Can anyone offer some advice or tips for getting them unstuck and able to thread out from the pedal arms - without ruining the aluminum pedal arms? I'm at my wit's end.! 😐

Velo Mule

Heat. The more, the better, until you start melting stuff then it's too hot. You can start with a propane torch if you have one. Or a butane torch. The other trick that is not a trick at all is a good sturdy pedal wrench or if the flats on the pedal are wide enough a 15mm open end wrench.

But use heat. Even a heat gun could help.

If that doesn't work right way, keep in mind that heat cycles will eventually work. Keep heating and letting it cool down again.

madpogue 

First -- in case you don't already know -- the non-drive-side pedal is REVERSE threaded.

To the above -- I would recommend the heavy-duty Park pedal wrench (sorry, I forget the exact tool #). You can start with a good quality open-end 15mm, but don't push it. I've been able to remove a couple of exceedingly resistant pedals with the "better" Park wrench that previously BROKE open-end wrenches, including an old '80s-vintage USA-made Craftsman.

nlerner

An early resto for me was an American middleweight that someone had given me, an old Columbia, I believe, complete with one of those horns inside the triangle of the frame. It had spent a lot of its life outdoors, so I wanted to overhaul all of the bears. Got one pedal off no problem. The other resisted my efforts. So I got a longer bar for increased leverage. Didn't budge for a while but then it gave--and I snapped the pedal spindle off right at the crank arm. Dang.

FBinNY 

Do not use heat unless you understand how to manage the potential consequences of changing the crank arms temper. The area at the pedal hole is extremely highly stressed, and any weakening to the arm there can lead to catastrophic failure at a critical moment ---- namely when you're exerting maximum strength on a hill climb are fully committed to that leg. Failure then means slamming the foot to earth, possibly spraining an ankle, or total loss of control because of the sudden weight shift pedal failure causes.

Removing frozen pedals is best done using long soaks in penetrating oil made for freeing freeing frozen bolts. You can also improve penetration and break any corrosion bonds by "wiggling" the pedal is a motion similar to how you'd work a fence post out of a hole. If the bike is still assembled, stand on that pedal and kind of hop on it at various positions between 12 and 6. You can also do the back side, by using a block to support the arm.

Patience is your friend here, repeated oil applications, with repeated flexing, then repeating efforts using a wrench and cheater bar to free it. It also helps to orient the wrench back along the crank and beyond center to help keep the crank from turning.

Nuovo Record

I have used heat. My source of heat was a simple household candle put right under the pedal axle for half an hour. Don`t touch the metal then. It gets HOT!

dddd

My rule of thumb for applying heat with a propane torch is that when the part starts issuing smoke when the torch is pulled away, it's guttenhot, still likely hundreds of degrees F below the metal's re-crystallization temperature.
You can go hundreds of degrees hotter with steel, but the chrome or other finish will be affected at some point.

I've had thread damage though when simply using a stronger wrench to unscrew an extremely stubborn pedal. Better to soak the threads for a good while before and after the part first breaks loose.

Mr. Spadoni 

Ran into the same problem this week. Used ice, used heat, broke a wrench. Realized that because of the shape of my wrench, I just couldn’t get good leverage. Took it to the LBS. They got out their big Park tool and a hammer. In the end, they still hand to stand on the wrench to get the pedal off. Time spent working on this at home? Several hours. At the bike shop? Five minutes. And they did it for free. Don’t worry, I paid them anyway. It was cheaper than buying the big pedal wrench that I’ve never needed in 40 years of riding.

xiaoman1 

Along with the above information, I found this very helpful
Good Luck, Ben

oneclick 

If you want to use heat there is an easy way to be safe (from mechanical issues; dealing with the other half...):

Put it in the cooker. Aluminium alloys will have changes you don't want starting at about 300 c. Set the temp to that or lower.

Going from 20 (room temp) to 220 makes a 14mm steel section 14.336, and a 14mm aluminium hole becomes 14.644.

For greatest leverage strip the pedal so only the shaft remains in the crank. Turn it upside down and hold the pedal shaft in a vice, and attach a bar of sufficient length to the crankarm with hose-clamps. Some pedals have a seating flange that will either need a pair of shims in the vice, or removal. Pedals with this flange are usually better quality, so find some shims if the bearings looked good when you stripped it.

Kai Winters

You may just be S O L.
I've bent a Park pedal wrench trying to break free a pedal that was rusted solid on a crank arm. I was also using a 3 foot pipe on the pedal wrench at the time. I tried heat, PB Blaster, etc. with no luck.
Good luck but don't be surprised if you just lose to the corrosion...it happens.

Kabuki12

I have a real nice Eldi pedal wrench that works well and if the pedal is stubborn I tap the wrench with a mallet while holding pressure on it .

Trakhak

It's probable that the majority of people who believe they have "stuck" pedals don't own a pedal wrench and don't realize that most other wrenches don't provide enough leverage to do the job. (That, and, of course, not knowing that the left pedal is left threaded. Like the left-side lug nuts on the 1960 Plymouth Golden Fury I used to own.)

When I worked in bike stores, I had the usual bike racer's pipe stem arms, so I had to get creative about using what little strength I had. As a consequence, I often succeeded at removing pedals from crank arms where other, much stronger mechanics failed. For pedals, my setup of last resort was the combination of a high-quality Crescent wrench plus a massive Park Tools FFS-2 fork blade straightening tool to apply three extra feet of leverage.

madpogue 

True, but that majority of people wouldn't come here for help. Given the bicycle list in the OP's profile, buying a pedal wrench wouldn't be out of the question.