Moon on a stick content – Kids Bikes

Totally outside of my comfort zone – looking for a bike suitable for an 11 year old boy, not too heavy etc. Looked at the usual suspects (Spesh Hotrock, Norco Storm).

Anything else I should be looking at?

How tall is he? Building up a second hand frame with spares could be a great dad/lad project?

Depends on your budget of course as well.

This is xs or small 26er frame with a home build territory. Lots of 26er stuff in the classifieds, mixed with some new if needed.

A few ideas here:
http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/xs-26-frame-inbred-anything-else-out-there

Key areas are crank length, contact points, and weight imo.

Ridgeback.

150cm – needs to be something he’ll grow into, but not 21″ Raleigh gate like I used to have!

Wife has specified new, rather than second hand.

Frog 73?
I’ve just bought a 24″ wheel version for my son and have been really impressed.

My daughter turned 11 this year and inherited my on one whippet. Problem with buying a new bike for a child of that age is that you are into adult bikes so unless you have oodles of cash to drop on it then I would go 2nd hand.

Fwiw my daughter loves the fact she has her dads bike, makes her feel grown up, never once complained about it not being new.

Edit- and be careful going for a 24 inch at this age, one growth spurt and he will outgrow it

I thought the stock answer was a Carrera Blast?

Fadda jnr loves his, although the horrid Clark’s mech brakes have been changed.

Thinking about it though, he’s around your lad’s size, and is growing out of it, rather than into.

After all that, I’d say small 26er…

Hth! 😆

Decathlon?

a link

On-One 14″ Inbred?

Insert 24″ wheels to start with if necessary.

Any reason give for why wife has specified new? You’ll probably get a lighter better bike using your spares box and a frame. For example for 500GBP last year I built a xs spesh rockhopper with marz bomber forks, XT 3×9, avid juicy brakes and raiding myself and mates odds n ends. It’s amazing what some people have in the garage.

Weight is the most important factor.

http://earlyrider.com/

Building up from a frame is the best option if you have plenty of spares lying around.
I managed this for about 400 earlier this year with a new XS cube attention from Bike.Discount and some parts (wheels/forks/brakes) I had as spares plus some extra bits and pieces off the classifieds/ebay.
As said above – a great project to learn about building a bike with your lad

Options seem to be:

1 – Rigid e.g Islabikes or Frog 26er… Very lightweight and size appropriate, and not too bad on the rougher terrain if you put large volume tyres on. Expensive but good resale value. Easy to maintain.

2 – New hard tail. Most come with so-so spec (not that big a deal IMO) and with poor forks (a big deal) and are heavy. High end ladies entry level e.g. Myra are not bad, as forks have soft springs and some sort of damping. Boardman Fi used to be an option but Xs bikes are pretty rare. Will look the part, be new, and they will enjoy it – but not cheap and rarely light. Cheaper models are usually heavy with rubbish forks.

3 – Build your own 2nd hand – Xs 26er and maybe an air fork upgrade. We went from an Islabikes 26 to an eBay Rockhopper with added Rebas. Takes some searching about but cost about the same as 2 above, and you get a fantastic bike. Upsize path is another frame – which hopefully gets easier as you are into S which is a common size… but 650b and 29ers have not helped as a Spesh frame swap will be for a 5 year old frame set.

http://youtu.be/cymXIV_8ymc

In my experience, for an 11 yr old kid to control and enjoy a bike it needs to be suitably light weight. They are probably half the weight and less than a third the strength of a 30yr old, so don’t expect them to enjoy a bike or develop useful skills on a gate that weights more than 15lb in weight. They don’t need suspension (that’s what their bendy bones are good for)
Thus go for Option 1 from Bartimaeus

I think it depends on the individual kid. Some may be faster on a hardtail with decent brakes compared to a rigid. In xc, the u8s are usually on fully rigid. The u11s are often on xs hardtails. The speed difference is huge. Some of the the u11s really rip, so consequently they are hitting everything harder, braking later etc.

Second hand GT Chucker (or A.N. Other small hardtail). We (me and my 13 year old nephew) built one up for him using second hand and some new parts and he loves it. It wash cheap to build as well, which was nice, and has the kudos (to him and his mates anyway!) of being a ‘jump’ bike. It’s 1×9 with air forks and is loads lighter than the Diamondback borderline BSO he had. He’s a complete loon on it too, much my delight and his mother’s chagrin 😆

Boardman sport/e or 14″ inbred build.? I did an inbred build for my daughter years ago.

MisterT – Member
In my experience, for an 11 yr old kid to control and enjoy a bike it needs to be suitably light weight. They are probably half the weight and less than a third the strength of a 30yr old, so don’t expect them to enjoy a bike or develop useful skills on a gate that weights more than 15lb in weight. They don’t need suspension (that’s what their bendy bones are good for)

Agree to a point. Our nine year old rides a rigid 24″ wheeled Islabike most of the time. But when we go to the Alps he’s on a Kona Stinky 2-4 which weights in at 29lbs after its diet. Doesn’t hold him back much downhill. Uphill is a different question.

course it wont its gravity assisted riding 😆

http://www.probikeshop.com/en/ie/search/commencal-24.html?search=commencal+24

10 year old here riding a 30lb full-sus at the minute… doesn’t hold him back much up or down!

As said up there ^^^ by Yak – it really does depend on the rider and it’s an age where it gets very hard to generalise. Fitness and skill starts to vary a lot rider to rider and they don’t necessarily track the same course. So you find very fit/fast riders who lack some skills, and very skilled riders who aren’t as fast. They’ll each benefit in different ways from riding different bikes. Riding rigid and sus, or light and chunky, each brings something different – there’s no one true course for rider development.

So knowing the rider and what they want to ride (racing or just ripping) is the key. Oh, and the budget. By far the most important thing though, is that they have a bike that they WANT to ride.

Commencal have got some awesome kids bikes – been looking at the Ramones 24 they’ve got them reduced to £300 (roughly it’s in euros and that includes delivery).

I’d like to get an XS 26″, but they seem few and far between and his 24″ lasted 2/5 years so I’m not worrying about him growing out of it too soon. I just wish they came with disc ready hubs, they’ve got disc mounts on the frame and fork, but not the hubs, all very 2005 of them.

My just turned 12 year old hauled 35lbs of Decathlons lowest spec hardtail round the blue at Kirroughtree in the summer. He and I were amazed how well he and it coped.

We are looking for an Inbred frame now to hang my spares box onto.

And to add some more specific advice – I built a 24″ hardtail for him when he was 9 (based on a Kona Stuff 2-4 frame with a cut down Pace sus fork). If I was buying now (and new) I’d be looking at the Commencal Meta HT 24 or similar, but our requirements are disks and (in an ideal world) suspension.

If you can do without suspension then the Genesis Core 24 looks a really good option – plenty of room for some fat tyres for some cush.

Islabikes are great bikes – light and well kitted, but the Beinn 26 isn’t much of a mountain bike. Would be good if you want an all rounder, but it’ll get out of it’s depth fairly quickly on anything serious off-road. Ditto for Frog, nice bikes, a bit cheaper than Islabikes, a bit cheaper specced than Islabikes.

At 150cm he is definitely heading into 26″ wheeled territory though – which at least means access to decent sus forks. On a budget you’re best bet is building around a small hartail frame (eg 14″ Inbred etc, see that other thread for candidates) Budget will dictate new or second hand. There’s XS carbon hardtails to be hard on eBay for a few hundred quid. As said (Yak again) cranks are often tricky to spec – 150mm Thorn ones are good as 104BCD.

Oh and the bike he’s on at the minute is the Trek Fuel EX Jr. Review here/in the mag imminent when I can find the time to finish writing it!

My two girls are both on 26″‘ers
One a Spesh xs that was a brand new warranty replacement from Hargroves – £100 frame, rest new parts from CRC/Rose, wheels my spares, air forks ebay.
Others an xs Kona off one of the ladies on here! as above rest new parts CRC/Rose and the wheels from here.
Both bikes were under £300 each all in inc air forks and they’re bloody loons on them!
For reference one is 14 and 150cm , the other 11 and 137cm tall

Perfect opportunity to use up the 26″ ‘old stock’ for me.

Having to flip a stem and run a curious V brake front, disk rear combo, but its all good!

The one other thing I’ve been mulling over is the q-factor. It would be really good to get this down on a kids bike, but the balance of chainline, difficulties in fitting small chainrings in the outer chainring position and then frame clearance makes this hard.

It would be good to see what work-around solutions anyone has for smaller q-factors.

I was amused by this http://www.bikebiz.com/news/read/frog-hails-breakthrough-in-kid-s-bike-design/018524

Judging by this review http://www.youthcyclesport.co.uk/kit/reviews/frog-69-review/ Frog’s breakthrough is reducing their q-factors to the same as Islabikes 😉

Looks to me like their putting their over-long chainstays to some use to make clearance for the cranks

Well, that’s one way. I was more thinking about the cranks that are available and how to get a 30t or similar chainring in the outer position. The clearance spacers built into those smaller chainrings mean they foul the inside of the crank arm.

A SRAM X0 Carbon DH single ring chainset ain’t cheap but it fits your bill I think.

And if one just happened to be remaindered in a 165mm a year or so ago one would have to buy it, wouldn’t one.

That and a Hope BB knocked a pound and a half off the Stinky’s weight too.