Race Face Turbine Pedals Review: Sending it is Scary

There are a few things I’d consider myself obsessed with when it comes to bike gear, and flat-pedal shoes are high on that list. I’m always searching for options that strike the right balance of pedal grip, durability, and comfort. But, as most shoes have proven over the years, having your cake and eating it too—and having that cake last an entire riding season—is a tall order. I’m on a similar mission with flat pedals, though I’ve found a couple of favorites that have kept me content: the OneUp Composite pedals and Wolf Tooth Waveforms both offer exceptional grip, proven reliability, and a comfortably sized platform. Still, the grass might always be greener, and I became curious about the all-new Race Face Turbine Pedals when the brand claimed they were designed for riders who “demand the ultimate locked-in feel on flat pedals.” I’d also heard positive things about the previous version, so I decided to give the new Turbines a try for a review.

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Sending it (on Flat Pedals) can be Scary

Race Face has been in the pedal game for a while. I put their Atlas pedals through 1,500 miles of use and abuse in Uganda and Rwanda nearly a decade ago and came away impressed. Those pedals remain relatively unchanged in their lineup, but the Turbine has since been refreshed with a clear goal in mind: to make the grippiest pedal possible. That level of grip isn’t for everyone, but it’s exactly what I’m after. As a full-on flat-pedal convert, I use them for everything—from touring to mountain biking. And let me tell you, having a pedal roll underfoot while railing a hardtail down rooty, rocky singletrack drops is terrifying. I take shoe rubber and pedal design seriously, and I’ve tested a lot of options.

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That said, I’m not married to a specific pedal profile. I’ve ridden both concave and convex platforms, and two of my favorites—OneUp’s Composite pedals and the Wolf Tooth Waveform—are quite different. The OneUp is convex; the Waveform is concave. The Turbine leans closer to the latter, featuring a dual-concave platform that dips in the middle both fore-to-aft and side-to-side. Its machined 6061 aluminum body offers a -3mm recess, 0.5mm deeper than the Waveform, and Race Face claims it’s the deepest on the market—designed to cradle the foot for better ergonomics, comfort, and grip. But that’s not the only thing that sets them apart.

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Each side of the Turbine pedal features 11 pins, each 6mm high. And while the sheer scale of these things may appear intimidating, the grip they deliver is undeniable, especially when paired with the pedal’s concave and wide platform. The pin layout is smart, too: four wide-set pins up front mirror the ball of the foot, and three tighter pins in the midfoot/rear area follow the natural taper of a shoe sole. I’ve run the Turbines on a rigid singlespeed Stooge and a very progressive hardtail, pushing them hard over Pisgah’s roots, rocks, drops, jumps, and general flotsam. No sketchy moments to report.

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Is the Race Face Turbine That Grippy?

In summary, these are the grippiest and most locked-in pedals I’ve ever used, period. That said, I still didn’t find it particularly difficult to reposition my foot while riding, even when paired with the ultra-tacky Specialized 2FO shoes. I think the relatively beefy 3mm-wide pins help in that regard—they’re a bit more blunt than some others, which might help make subtle adjustments easier. One downside of the longer pins is that they create more leverage. On my early rides, I noticed that pushing or pulling my foot on the pedal sometimes caused it to over-rotate on the axle while spinning along. That mishap only happened on a couple of early rides but was never an issue once muscle memory kicked in. As for wear, the aggressive 6mm pins can chew into shoe rubber, though probably not much more than most modern, spiky flat pedals.

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For those looking to dial things back, the pin height is adjustable from 6mm down to about 5mm using the included washers. For comparison, the exposed pins on the Wolf Tooth Waveform and OneUp Composite measure around 4.5mm. Rather than deal with the tedious task of adding washers to turn these full-on shin gougers into something more mildly menacing, I chose to leave them in full cat attack mode. That said, considering how grippy they are, I’d bet they’d still offer plenty of traction, even at the lower 5mm setting.

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Real Estate

The Race Face Turbine uses a bearing/bushing layout that eliminates the bearing bulge commonly found in aggressive flat pedals. This results in a larger effective platform and allows your foot to sit farther inboard. Among the pedals I had on hand, the Turbine’s platform was not only the widest but also the only one (aside from the OneUps) with a marked asymmetric profile—broader at the front and narrower at the rear—to mirror the foot’s natural shape. The idea behind this shape isn’t just to maximize grip and pin contact (which it certainly does) but also to provide better foot support, offering more surface area where the forefoot sits and tapering toward the midfoot and heel. I wear a fairly average US size 9.5–10 shoe, and I’d say the Turbine might be just a scooch on the large side, but I appreciated the extra space. They’d be great for riders with larger feet, and I think they’d also make an excellent choice for off-road touring.

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At 20mm thick, the Turbines are also noticeably chunkier than many competitors—Wolf Tooth’s Waveform, for example, is just 14mm at the leading edge, a 6mm difference (or 3mm distance to the ground). The Turbine is also about a centimeter wider than the Waveform when measured from the crank face. Given my propensity toward progressive hardtails with ultra-low bottom brackets, I’m pretty sensitive to pedal size after a few years of riding Oaxaca’s rutted trails; my last two major crashes were the result of clipping a pedal on a rock at speed. That said, the Turbine’s asymmetric profile and beveled edges are designed to reduce strikes, and after a dozen or two rides—including on a bike with a fairly low bottom bracket—I was surprised to find no increase in pedal strikes compared to the Waveforms or OneUps. For what it’s worth, Race Face also claims the new design improves clearance and gives the pedal a better chance of deflecting hits than its predecessor.

Durability

The Turbine seems beefy enough that I wouldn’t worry about breaking it, and they cover it with a lifetime warranty, inclusive of crashes. But breakage isn’t generally a concern with most flat pedals, from my experience. The devils are usually on the inside. The Turbine uses a fairly basic internal design with a beefy tapered steel axle held in place with an 8mm nut—and there’s an alloy dust cap accessible via an 8mm Allen wrench. Upon pulling it apart, it seems pretty straightforward.

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To avoid the bearing bulge, they used a smaller 686Z bearing outboard and an Igus bushing inboard protected by a rubber dust boot on the axle. Race Face states that the Turbine is fully rebuildable, although I failed to find a rebuild kit on their website. I’m hoping it will come with a new boot, bearing, bushing, and bushing/bearing removal tool. They also claim their internals have endured over a million test cycles with no signs of wear. Based on some very rough calculations, that’s somewhere around 4,000 miles(?). That seems a bit hopeful, but only time will tell.

• Model/Size Tested: Race Face Turbine, Silver
• Actual Weight (pair): 416 grams
• Place of Manufacture: Taiwan
• Price: $180 at Jenson
• Manufacturer’s Details: Race Face

Further Reading

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