On the one hand, I've worked in the industry long enough that I've seen plenty of broken aluminum pedals. Smoke 'em hard enough on a rock and even the beefiest bodies can fail.
On the other hand, I have a handful of riding buddies on the plastic Wah Wah 2 pedals and while they all have obvious gouging where the trail's chewed on them there have been zero body failures, the guts have proven to be good, and everyone is genuinely very happy.
If in doubt I would definitely err on the side of the aluminum pedal - it just comes down to basic composite vs aluminum properties as with bars and rims. An aluminum pedal is more likely to warp than fail catastrophically in mountain monster situations.
May 23, 2019, 6:26 p.m. - Andrew Major
On the one hand, I've worked in the industry long enough that I've seen plenty of broken aluminum pedals. Smoke 'em hard enough on a rock and even the beefiest bodies can fail. On the other hand, I have a handful of riding buddies on the plastic Wah Wah 2 pedals and while they all have obvious gouging where the trail's chewed on them there have been zero body failures, the guts have proven to be good, and everyone is genuinely very happy. If in doubt I would definitely err on the side of the aluminum pedal - it just comes down to basic composite vs aluminum properties as with bars and rims. An aluminum pedal is more likely to warp than fail catastrophically in mountain monster situations.