Sidi shoes vs Shimano cleats

Tricia wore out her beloved Sidi shoes. Too many miles and too many days just did them in. She's replaced the cleats several times, and even the wonderfully replaceable heal piece. But her ruby-red slippers at last came to their end.

We'd looked for perfectly matching ruby-shaded replacements, but I don't think they make them any more.  Tricia, a woman with white bar tape and a white saddle, decided she'd give white shoes a chance.  Sidi, of course. And they do indeed look marvelous.

It would be silly to get new shoes and not get new cleats, so she bought a pair of Shimano SPD-SL road cleats as well. I installed them to match the placement of her old cleats and figured we were good to go.

Nope.

They wouldn't clip in to her Ultegra pedals. I thought at first maybe they were new and just stiff, so I tried it. No deal. After much frustration, fussing about and looking hard it turned out the problem was the interface between the shoe and cleat. The bottoms of these shoes are more curved than her old shoes. Enough that the cleat bent when I tightened it down, making it impossible to click in.

As far as I know there isn't a custom titanium shim for $189.00 to solve this, so I used a couple of old zinc washers I had, installing them under the front bolt. It took two for each shoe. But it worked well enough that Tricia was able to wear her new shiny white shoes today.