Given RCUK’s test pair of Giro Factor road shoes to try out, sportive enthusiast Jon Gregory found himself suffering from pain in the soles of his feet. On investigation, the cause turned out to be the screws securing the cleats of his Time pedals to the shoes.

At just 6.5mm in depth, the Factor’s carbon-fibre sole is so thin – by design – that screws that work fine with thicker soles protrude beyond the top of the sole to create small raised points on the upper surface of the sole right where the foot pressing on the pedal generates the most pressure on the shoe.

Given that the screws are specifically designed to work with their cleats, having a shallow, wide-diameter head that spreads more widely the clamping force applied to the soft plastic of the cleat, the practicable solution is not to buy shorter screws but to cut short those supplied with the pedals.

But how to hold such small items while so doing without damaging the pan-shaped head? Held tightly enough in a vice to allow a hacksaw to get a bite, the head would surely be deformed.  The answer is to hold the screw in a threaded plate. A suitable example will be found in the sole of many mtb shoes where it provided the thread for the cleat; here we use a plate from an old Shimano road design.

The screw must be tight and should be cut with the excess thread protruding from the left of the plate ( the reverse of what is shown) so that the cutting stroke tends to keep the screw tight.

File the cut end flat and then, to remove any sharp burr left by removal from the plate, partly unscrew it so the end of the male screw thread passes inside the female plate thread and then screw back out to allow the burr to be nibbed off. Job done.