Maybe enough of these threads already but rather than flood someone’s own build thread. Just about to start a build with a Commencal ramones 24 frame and a Spinner grind or RST first air fork.

First question from me is has anyone used the Airnimal 24 inch disc only rims? Seem like a good option at 495g but half the price of a stans crest?

Also wondering who does a 140mm ish 4 bolt chain Set?

Feel free to fire all your queries, ideas or your own builds on here.

Simon

Suntour XCT Jr is 150mm crank with 104BCD if you’re happy with square taper.

Or phone Hope and ask really nicely for one of the cranks they use on their kids bikes…

What’s the AC on the Commencal frame??? 417mm seems to be off their web page so that will dictate your fork to some extent
.
Also seems a really decent price ….

First question from me is has anyone used the Airnimal 24 inch disc only rims? Seem like a good option at 495g but half the price of a stans crest?

Depends what you want the bike for…. if you want a DJ bike or XC bike…
You can have cheaper rims and spend more on spokes/hubs …. etc.

TBH … I tried to do budget on the wheels for Jnr’s 1st 24″ bike and in the end it was all wasted money.
Started off with a Raleigh rear wheel … which isn’t ONLY heavy but needs a stripdown and rebuild every week or so in winter.

I now own 4 sets of 24″ rims and the only set that get used really are the Stans…
I use a non disk one sometimes on the rear when he uses the trainer…. (with a crap but non knobbly tyre and floe ratio cassette) and another set of heavy wheels for messing about when we have his XC and FS bike at the same time (he used them last Saturday and Sunday doing some warm up laps on XC course on his FS…. and it meant i could ride his spare bike to the registration area…. (but that’s really picking at straws… the Stans with CX-RAY are not only lighter but stronger…. so even on uplift day’s I suspect we’ll end up on the Stans

If I was to do it all again I’d go straight for the Stans with good hubs and good spokes.

On the XC I’d still go for the First Air….
Saving money on 10sp I’d go SLX except cassette …. his CX bike rear brake is SLX … and his FS is only XT because that’s what came off my XC … but I’d still use a 11-36XT cassette as its both a fair but lighter and more flexible (less on spiders) and takes a 40/42 …

Novatec D711/712’s have proven more durable than expected (Freewheel locked after a year… I had a spare so changed it and will change the bearings in the other when my limbs are all working again – I’m currently 1 armed)

Cranks wise it’s a ball park… Unless you can sound better than me Hope won’t sell you the 140’s… I tried…

Isla will – or some have managed …. Trailcraft will definitely (if you want to spend that)

OR .. you can just make some

I’ve shortened SRAM S600’s and some old Shimano Alivio square taper …. and also a set of Zee’s
BB+Cranks the Zee’s are MARGINALLY lighter …. and I mean marginally… I wouldn’t bother with the Zee’s again… (its like 20/30g as the weight is mainly on the spindle and mostly just replaces what you saved on the BB)

SteveXTC

Always gotta smile when I see your posts. You appear to be the exact opposite of me in terms of bike riding/maintenance.

4 sets of rims?

I’ve got one set, one wheel for each end of the bike.

Strip down and build every week

. My mind is just boggling at the mere idea of doing this.

I did get a chain guide for junior when he kept dropping chains; and fitted a new mech hanger when he surfed his bike along a drystone wall on the Consiston -> Ambleside road; but apart from that, his bike is firmly there for riding, not fettling.

Where on earth do you get the time

Vive la difference 😀

rst first ~ 400 A2C measurement slightly longer fork

https://www.propain-bikes.com/Artikeldetail?StuffID=5c58e81e-6d45-474e-8dbd-64060e2981dd

rims, if you want light then you’ll have to go stans.

cranks are more of an issue unless you do what steve did and shorten some S600’s There was a german company that did their own cranks for their kids bikes but can’t remember their name.

Evans do some not 4 bolt 140mm sq taper cranks
https://www.evanscycles.com/pinnacle-hoy-bonaly-24-chainset-EV252535
Bit cheap and nasty looking, but hey ho.

SteveXTC

Always gotta smile when I see your posts. You appear to be the exact opposite of me in terms of bike riding/maintenance.

4 sets of rims?
I’ve got one set, one wheel for each end of the bike.
Strip down and build every week
. My mind is just boggling at the mere idea of doing this.
I did get a chain guide for junior when he kept dropping chains; and fitted a new mech hanger when he surfed his bike along a drystone wall on the Consiston -> Ambleside road; but apart from that, his bike is firmly there for riding, not fettling.

Where on earth do you get the time

Vive la difference

I think our misreading …..
I ended up with 4 sets of rims/wheels trying to go cheap….1 set came with the frame .. had no disc mounts … what I should have done was buy the ones POAH was selling at the time straight away…. but I faffed about and hey ho ….

I then got the Raleigh Wheel … mainly as an interim so I wouldn’t have to fettle….
However every 2-3 weeks the freewheel locked up…. I’d have to pull it apart and rebuild…or not ride

I’ve got one set, one wheel for each end of the bike.

Junior effectively has 1 set for 2 bikes….

What I’m recommending is just spend the money on the wheels!
I just faffed about and lost time … AND I ended up spending more in the end as well.

The wheels that came with the bike have no disk mounts… not worth taking apart or selling….
(That’s pair 1)

The other (Raleigh) rear wheel is spare … not worth selling and not worth saving the rims…. so it’s purpose is to reduce fettling …. rather than pull off the tubeless each time he wants to go on the Turbo trainer…. and swap the QR etc. I just swap back wheels…. as we have a tighter ratio cassette free I stuck his on… so we can swap from XC spec to indoor trainer in under a minute … (Have you tried running knobbly on a Turbo trainer) – So long as it doesn’t get wet it seems to keep working…

I also have a spare seat post – 450mm long…. with an old saddle .. again purpose is non fettling so I can stick it on his bike and use the trainer…. (which gives some interesting cadences with 140mm cranks) but kits a 20 sec fix to using the trainer.

His FS came with wheels…. but they are so heavy as to not be really worth using… except to act as a set to get damaged when we ride uplifts or bike parks.

Where on earth do you get the time

To be fair you can completely strip and rebuild a whole bike in an hour…. (excepting pulling headsets) or stripping a fork/shock or rebuilding wheels….

When I stuck the XT on his FS the whole thing took 25 mins max and 5 of those was because I had to shorten a brake hose and it was internal on my bike.
I just pulled off the bars, brakes and shifter as one unit and then fitted to his… and fitted new internal cables whilst I was doing it.

Nice sunny day, a beer .. after we got back from riding and now I only need to worry about 1 type of brake pads between all the bikes… have 1 bleed kit and same spare hose/olive.

I tend to go for the clover leaf approach to bike maintenance usually.

However tomorrow junior and I are setting off on the WHW, which is about as non-clover leaf as you can get.
You couldn’t give me your phone number for when something breaks/falls of his bike could you? 😛

gulp

Whilst I’m trying not to chock on “you can rebuild a bike in an hour” (you can, maybe!) this is very true:

Nice sunny day, a beer .. after we got back from riding and now I only need to worry about 1 type of brake pads between all the bikes… have 1 bleed kit and same spare hose/olive.

Four bikes here, all with the same Deore brakes. Got a huge bag of spare pads, a litre of mineral oil, and I’ve finally got the hang of bleeding brakes.

Perfect timing as i’ve just (five minutes ago anyway) finished this monster. Carrera Luna (girly version of the Blast).

Changes from stock (stuff pillaged shed/other unused bikes):

Cotic Cromo rail seat + Superstar seatpost

Brake calipers – Squealed/rubbed like frig. No amount of fiddling cured it so they;’ve been upgraded to better (?) Tektro brakes. Old levers were a good size so kept those, and the wee fella prefers twist shift to kept them too and transfered them onto…

AXC Bars (660 wide 42 rise)

Nukeproof 50mm stem

Biggest change is the front end. Now sporting 36 Talas and 26″ Mavic 321 on Hope pro II 😀 A bit overkill for a big 9 year old but sure – he has quality damping now.

Not one for weighing bikes but it quite possibly weighs more now 😆 Neither he nor i are fussed but it’ll be super confidence inspiring compared to what it was and easier to pedal without the brake rub

And in comedy 150mm mode

how much does that push the front up given they come with 50mm forks as standard?

That looks neat! Not sure about the risers mind you. Surely the front is high enough anyway?

how much does that push the front up given they come with 50mm forks as standard

Bar position is only about 20mm higher than before as the the previous stem was 60mm rise! Lost a spacer from under there too. Travel up from 80 to 110, bigger tyre/wheel adds another 30 and additional A2C is around 25.

Not sure about the risers mind you

Not ideal (same as his old ones) but the only bars i had that didn’t require cutting. I’ll see how he gets on with the extra width and if ok i’ve an old pair of low rise Specialized bars i’ll chop down for him.

I took it for a little blip. It’s a riot to ride and much less twitchy than before. The front feels really good 😀

80mm, not a 24 inch then

Following this with interest, just bought a 2nd hand orbea mx 24 as a base with the intention of upgrading forks ro either spinner grind or carbon rigid to save weight and crest rims on some hope hubs. i’ll probably end up donating brakes and groupset off my bike when I get around to treating myself to some saints and 11sp.

thought about buying a 14″ carbon 26 frame from china (eBay item no. 263084875707) and putting 24″ wheels in it until the boy is tall enough for 26 wheels. He’s 8 in November so in theory the bike would last a while. Anyone else considering this?

Trailcraft have a range of crans now.

Also Spawn, supposed to be launching in the UK imminently..

@hhugogogggoooggo
My boy is riding an XS standard 26″ frame with 24″ wheels, with no problems.
About a year or so from now, i’ll sling some 26″ wheels in there and he’ll be good for another few years.

@BearBack

These suntour cranks @ 150mm are MUCH cheaper than those others, and from what i can see, just the same. They are pretty light, if you bin the steel rings and replace fora single NW ali version.

They are, it was more the external BB versions that are unique in those shorter sizes. Only SRAM nx are available in under 165 lengths in that format afaik.

Forks wise, I’d skip the spinners u less you plan to fettle with the too out spring. The 24mm version is largely pants and the 30mm ‘300’ version is much better.. but full stanction travel is not achievable with either (IME from both 24 and 30 20″ versions)
no experience of the f1srt air as a comparison.
I’m hoping for some NOS dt Swiss xmc80s for my current RC24 project.

my little man is fortunate enough to be running some RS SID forks, custom tuned for his weight by TFTuned. Made a huge difference to the performance of the fork. IN fact, without the tune, they didn’t really work.

80mm, not a 24 inch then

It had two 24″ wheels, that’s a 24 in my book 😛 . It’s maybe 6 years old now and doesn’t look like any of the googles i saw but the stanchions have bang on 80mm showing.

Those Spawn bikes look all kinds of awesome, and a lot of their components (such as 24″ tubeless rims or 140mm cranks) are actually from http://broodbikes.com. Which, sadly, is just a “coming soon” page at the moment but I’m totally booking that.

thought about buying a 14″ carbon 26 frame from china (eBay item no. 263084875707) and putting 24″ wheels in it until the boy is tall enough for 26 wheels.

I thought about it a while ago…. but for a stack of reasons glad I didn’t (for us)
These are my reasons but that’s based on what my 7yr old rides… so pick and choose what is relevant to you.

1/ Weight saving on a 26″ Carbon over a 24″ Aluminium is minimal… the frame might be less but the components weigh the same and the wheels more…
(on the plus you get the 26″ rolling – but not when you are still on 24) – He’s also bigger and stronger than a year ago… back then 500g was a big difference on climbs.. now I’l stick a litre of water on his back and get him carrying his own food…

2/ The Carbon frames I saw (not looked at that specific one) are way more XC focussed long chain stays and low BB’s – when running in 24″ the BB is even lower and chain stays are even more exaggerated so your going to end up with a pretty extreme bike that wants to keep the front wheel down … and will be really hard to manual or keep the front wheel from diving on drop offs…

3/ We ride way more technical trails than we do XC type… and his fairly long chainstay 24er started to be less than ideal…. so much so I started looking to try and find a used frame and an Orbea .MX was top of the list… the bike has and still is really good but it has just shown its limitations as he has progressed in terms of what he rides..

If I was buying another HT I’d most likely get a MX …. (but now he has a FS as well so we opted for almost 2 ends of the geometries) but the 26″ carbon would be everything we were looking to change/move away from in terms of a single bike….

my little man is fortunate enough to be running some RS SID forks, custom tuned for his weight by TFTuned. Made a huge difference to the performance of the fork. IN fact, without the tune, they didn’t really work.

Lardman …. Do you know what TFT did (in terms of tuning)
I’ve got some SID’s fitted with only 5-6 hours on them and intend to get them tuned but other than send them to one of the tuners with “please make eatable for 25kg rider” I’m not sure how to compare ???

I’ve heard different things being done from revalves to changing shims to lighter oil etc. so I’m trying to work out who to send them to … especially as we have a weeks holiday coming up when I can send them away without missing any riding… so it could also depend on who can take them that week and me being able to compare what they are going to do for “tuning”

Lewis’s SIDs where revalved by jetch, made a bit of a difference. I swapped the damping oil from RS 5wt to RS 2.5wt (reverb oil now) which makes a difference to LSC but not much on the HSC. You can also change the oil volume as that affects the end stroke so less oil means easier to bottom out so I put the minimum in.

Lardman …. Do you know what TFT did (in terms of tuning)
I’ve got some SID’s fitted with only 5-6 hours on them and intend to get them tuned but other than send them to one of the tuners with “please make eatable for 25kg rider” I’m not sure how to compare ???

I literally said that the riders weight was 40kgs and they made the rest happen. Before the tuning, the fork was hard to get moving, and did not return quickly enough. After the tuning the fork is more compliant and has a much quicker action. Really helps him cope with bumps in the corners….

Those Trailcraft cranks look good.
Suppose it depends if you get stung on import duty as to whether they’re cost effective at £70.00 including shipping.

Works out about the same to get the Suntour ones shortened by Highpath.

Works out about the same to get the Suntour ones shortened by Highpath.

Did you add the P&P/Vat etc.

I was all set for Highpath and then did the basket … by the time the P&P and Vat was added it was considerably more … and a set of 9/16th taps were only about a tenner and £35 for some SRAM S600’s.

The taps have now been used on 3 different set of cranks and it turns to to be way easier than I thought
(I gave a spare set away a month or so ago on here as they were excess to requirements)

I literally said that the riders weight was 40kgs and they made the rest happen

Hmmm… 25kg to 40kg is a fair bit …. I got a lot more travel by removing the volume spacers (tokens) which let me increase pressure enough to get a fair bit of use…

If they are switching oil though I want to know… as in I don’t want to have to send them off to TFT each service because i don’t know which oils to use etc. (Nothing agains them but sometimes its just easier to do stuff yourself – not simply cost) much easier to buy oil and seal kit from them than arrange fork shipment and redelivery!

Need to get my finger out this week and get some more bits ordered, frame is due tomorrow so think I’ll take the punt on a set of spinner forks and try and fettle the damper and top out.

Have some hope bits to use, hubs, headset and seat clamp and will probably donate some 10 speed x9 bits as an excuse to go 1×11 on my own bike.

Tempted by the Circe cycles rims and we’ll see how they work out

@stevextc: Cheers for the info had a comparison of geo on the carbon frame and the orbea, my lad isn’t particularly extreme on his bike, as long as it does skids he’ll be happy but I think I’ll stick with the orbea frame for now.

Undecided on forks, I [/i]need to replace them to upgrade to disc brakes but unsure about the spinners now so started to look at SIDs or some carbon disc mount ones so the front end isn’t too high – not sure how much use he’d get out of suspension.

@sssimon: keep us updated with your build, I considered the ramones frame myself, really like the look of the Meta HT 24 but couldn’t find a frame only option and landed on a reasonably priced orbea in the end.

No big updates as it’s been a busy month with work, holidays and running so hopefully the frame arrives early next week after the first one going missing with a French courier.

Think I have the rest of the build sorted, looking like this

Frame Commencal ramones 24
Fork Spinner grind air
Wheels hope xc rear and pro 2 front, rims are some sort of Alex disc only
Groupset 1×10 sram x9 and gx with 11/36 cassette, suntour 150mm cranks but may end up with nx155mm
Brakes Elixir 5 but depending on how he gets on with the levers we may go for shimano as they seem to suit small hands

Finishing kit will be from the big box of spares although I found I had a nice 25.4 Easton vice stem so I’m sure there are plenty of old ea70 or ec70 bars out there going cheap. Saddle will be stolen off his ramones 20 as he likes it and I have a few seat posts spare.

Really looking forward to the build now as is junior, he’s been reading some of the Chris hoy “flying fergus” books so he’s keen to know the names of all the bits and see how they all fit together.

Frame arrived today ( missing a mech hanger, have emailed commencal to see if it should have one of if i need to get one)

1580g bare.

When my sons arrived it didn’t have one even though I phoned them to check it did before ordering as the web site didn’t say. When I emailed them to say it hadn’t turned up they sent me a picture of there web site saying mech hanger not included which definitely wasn’t there when I ordered the frame.

I did have my suspicions as the photo has none fitted. Must work out what fits and get a couple off the Ebay

Sods law a neighbour just left a carerra Luna with me as it was taking up space on their garage and it was too tatty for him to sell. Will either be a temporary parts donor or a spare bike to keep at his Nan’s house.

Spinner grind air 300 ordered from Lukasz at blue pill this morning so hoping to have them here next week. Decided to use the Luna as a donor bike for now for wheels and gears until I sort out some rims ( or bite the bullet and order a pair of crests)

What shifters have you found best for little hands? I’m looking at getting #2 a 24″ bike and those I’ve seen come with either gripshifts, triggers and thumbshifters. Not sure which is best

Some seem to love twist shifters but without spending more the basic ones tend to be heavy and fragile. We are going to try a sram x9 I have and see how he gets on with it but I have a feeling a shimano is probably easier for him and may well end up going that route.

What shifters have you found best for little hands? I’m looking at getting #2 a 24″ bike and those I’ve seen come with either gripshifts, triggers and thumbshifters. Not sure which is best

Saint triggers – longer levers require less force. Have Saint + SLX rear mech on a 20″ and our 6yo daughter has no problems clicking up and down the cassette.

^^ yep,saint trigger on zee fr mech for all my kids geared bikes.
Best shifting I’ve had on of my bikes too.