Just a quick positive experience post to counter my constant negativity:

As my lad struggles with the gripshift on his Beinn, I thought I’d swap in a SRAM trigger shifter. I needed to buy a ‘normal’ grip from Islabikes to replace the shortened RH gripshift grip.

What did I do? Bought another shortened RH grip. D’oh! 🙄

Emailed Islabikes to ask to return it, and they have sent a correct full-length grip out FOC, and said keep the RH one as a spare.

Superb customer service, really impressed.

Spank do some really nice kids loc on grips.

What was it about the gripshift he struggled with if you don’t mind me asking?

I’ve just bought a Beinn for my boy 😕

It’ll be his second Islabike, their geometry is spot on, everything scaled down perfectly. And the weight is incredible compared to other kid’s BSOs

Enfht, it’s the actual shift action whilst riding along he struggles with – he’s not the most confident rider, and the motion of sort of loosening his grip plus thinking about up or down and pedalling at the same time has sort of caused a brainfart.

He doesn’t get much practice though round here, unfortunately, as it’s very hilly so we have to drive anywhere for him to practice. I’m sure if he was riding regularly it wouldn’t be so much of a problem.

The shifter itself also seems a bit stiff for a littley. I’ve got a SRAM trigger to replace it as an experiment so we’ll see how that goes.

I’m not stalking you, honest. Let me know how it goes though please! My chap is about ready to move up from Cnoc 14 to Beinn, and I had been wondering about gripshift vs triggers.

I always found the Shimano ‘gripshift’ type shifters much lighter and easier to use on children’s bikes

Spank do some really nice kids

it took a couple of reads before I saw ‘do’ there. Must slow down

We know lots of kids that haven’t enough grip for gripshift.

Best conversion we did for ours was a cheap thumbshifter which they can grab with a whole hand.