Service your pedals in under 5 minutes guide

Most basic flat pedals are treated as disposable. When they start feeling gritty, they usually end up in the trash because servicing them is a nightmare. I’ve managed to get 12,000 km out of a cheap pair of Wellgo platforms over 8 years of all-season commuting and light XC riding. Even though I am not a light rider and ride in a hilly city they still spin smooth and work great.

Here is how you can prolong the life of almost any ball-bearing pedal for under 1 €/$.

Regular maintenance of pedals is a good way to increase their life. With ball bearings (nut and cone) regular maintenance can be very easy or complicated, depending how the system was designed.

But even with a proprietary system that doesn't put emphasis in easy serviceability you can still use this hack with no problem.

Not all nut and cone pedals are easy to work on. I have a pair of Wellgo flat pedals, one of their basic models. I serviced them 2 or 3 times until now and is was no walk in the park. The problem comes from the fact that the cone is recedes in the pedal body. And when you try to tighten the locking nut you have no way of holding the cone fixed in place. This style of pedals is not found just in cheap Wellgo pedals but can be found in Shimano, DMR and other lesser known brands. These type of pedals are viewed by some as disposable as they need propriety tools that are not cheap to be serviced.

There is no one tool to rule them all. For example Shimano uses 7 or 8 mm locking nut and 10 or 11 mm for the cone. For this you need the tool PD-63 that is a set of combined tubular keys with thin walls that allows to grip the cone and tighten the locking nut for a precise adjustment.

Wellgo in the pedal I have uses 9 and 13 mm lock-nut and cone. A system similar to DMR pedals. DMR makes a tool which is called DMR pedal tool V2 which works the same way as the Shimano. But DMR pedal tool V2 has a reasonable price.

It is not impossible to open the pedals and service them without the tools but it won't be a fun experience. Some people use a flat head screwdriver, but I found it cumbersome and not very reliable. It takes multiple tries to set it just right. You have to insert the screwdriver in such a way that yo block the cone from turning when you tighten the nut. It is not that easy, and in the end I ditched the screwdriver and over tighten the pedal then backed up the cone and it seamed to work better.

The result is that most people will not service their pedals and just throw them away when it's time and buy a new pair.

Of course there are other manufacturers of pedals manufacturers that have solved this issue without the need for a proprietary tool. The axel of the pedal is slotted and than a regular set of tubular keys will work just fine for tuning the cone and tightening the lock nut. Pedal manufacturers like HT, VP, Union/Marwi have serviceable ball bearing pedals. This system is much more easier to work on but still takes time to do it.

Coming back to my pedals and the difficulty of servicing them. 

The Wellgo pair that I am servicing is a cheap platform that I bought in 2018, and now in 2026 they have close to 12.000 km. I am a heavier rider, I ride in a hilly city, most of the km are commute. I am an all season bike commuter so the pedals don't have the easiest life.

I could buy the DMR pedal tool V2 and probably in the future I will as Wellgo uses the same size as DMR for the bolts, but I got intrigued by servicing the pedal without opening it. I am fascinated with DMR V8 classic pedals with grease port and by the design of the Shimano SPD pedals and GR500. These systems rely on new grease flushing the old dirty grease from the bearing. Even though Shimano and DMR took different paths the principle is the same.

How to clean dirty grease from any ball bearing pedal in less then 5 minutes without taking the pedal apart?

You do not need a grease port on the pedal, and you don't need to take the pedals off the bike. 

 

What do you need:

    Grease NLGI 2 general purpose is fine,

    10 ml syringe

    knife

    a pick or a screwdriver 

    paper towels and a trashcan nearby

Step by step - flushing the pedals

 

Step 1 - Preparation

Cut off the front part of the syringe, leaving behind a straight tube and the plunger. The diameter of the 10 ml syringe should fit in the pedal snugly.

Remove the dust cap from the pedal using a screwdriver or a pick 

You can see the old grease (motorex 2000), looks really good, but the this end, usually is pretty clean. The other end of the axle is where the dirt gets in, you will see in the flushed grease.

 

Step 2 - Flush the old grease out

Fill the syringe with new clean grease. I just dipped it in the container and sucked in the grease. Really easy and fast.

You need to apply a little bit of pressure so that the grease doesn't just exist around the syringe body and travels through the entire axle to the other end.

While I am flushing the pedal I rotate it in order to make sure that the new grease is going through all the bearings.

You will see the old dirty grease getting out on the opposite end. The grease coming out of my pedals looked like black sludge, not even close color compared with the neon green Motorex I put in 2 seasons ago.

The crank side of the pedal is where most of the dirt gets in, and by doing this purge you push the dirt out the same way it got in.

 

Step 3 - Clean the pedals and ride

Keep some paper towels and a trash can near by though.

When the grease coming out is clean the service is complete. Just clean the excess and you can jump to the other pedal.

 

Until now I used Motorex 2000 as it is a very good, sticky and water resistant grease, but for this method I switched to a cheaper alternative, a lithium calcium NLGI 2 grease from the local hardware store.

It is better to have clean and fresh grease in the bearings, although cheap, all the time than premium grease that has turned into grinding paste because you never change it.

One thing to take into account, not all greases are compatible so it is best to flush the pedals completely for the first time you do this. Next times you can just do a top up.

I bought the grease for 3€ / 3.5$ 400 ml, 2 syringes (10 ml) for 0.2€ / 0.23$ (you only need one, but I got a spare just in case).

  

One pedal needed 5 or 6 flushes of grease until the grease that was getting out on the opposite side was clean, while the other pedal only took 3 flushes. In total i used ~65 grams of grease from the tube which corresponds to ~70 ml according to Chat GPT.

So the 3 € / 3.5$ pack of grease should be enough to flush the pedals around 5-6 times. Which equates to 5 minutes of service and a cost of around 0.55€ / 0.64$ / service.

 

Let me know if you found this helpful.