Cinelli Kink Pedal Straps and Fyxation Gates Platform Pedals

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Every once in a while here at Fyxation we get questions from our customers about compatibility between their pedal straps and our line up of pedals.  We recently got a request about the new Cinelli Kink Pedal straps and what Fyxation pedals they would work with.  We saw that these straps were introduced by Cinelli USA earlier this year and we haven't actually seen them up close so we ordered up a set from BTI and went to work here in the lab.

Before we give a thorough review of the Cinelli pedal straps here is what we came up with for compatibility:

• Fyxation Gates Pedals and Cinelli Kink Straps - Yep
• Fyxation Gates Slim Pedals and Cinelli Kink Straps - Nope
• Fyxation Mesa Pedals and Cinelli Kink Straps - Nope
• Fyxation Mesa 61 Pedals and Cinelli Kink Straps - Nope

The lower webbing on the kink straps is pretty thick so you have to have a wide opening in your pedal for them to thread through.  Because of this they were only able to thread through our Gates platform pedal which is a more traditional platform pedal. 

Now for our thoughts on the pedal. First of all, they look pretty cool and have a nice synthetic leather cover on the top strap that has some nice graphics and gives the strap a polished look. They are made in China in conjunction with DZR shoes so these are not made in the USA like our Gates Pedal straps but also pedal straps from Holdfast and Burro Bags.  They also have a nice anodized buckle to connect the upper and lower strap and seem to maintain their shape fairly well. 

They look very polished but when we tried to set them up they were pretty difficult to install. This isn't too big of a deal with pedal straps because you're not changing them in and out very often however it was kind of a pain to do.  A bigger issue we found however is that they aren't very easy to adjust once they've been installed on the pedal.   One of the  nice things about velcro pedal straps is that you can easily switch footwear depending on your mood or the season.  Having the ability to quickly adjust the straps to a different size shoe is very important and with the Cinelli Kink straps, proved very difficult.  We also found that they were somewhat difficult to get into but that could have been because of the way we set them up. Not quite sure.

Overall it's a good effort from Cinelli but in our opinion function wins over fashion when it comes to urban cycling and you may want to look elsewhere (hint hint) for some pedal straps.