I really need to find this a new home if it would fit the bill. Cheap. Nice (but old) bits (inc custom Pace fork). Weight OK, but not super light. Main downside is that it’s not got big standover clearance.

Merlin do Rock N Roll which is my lube of choice – in one of its 3 varieties. Follow the instructions, apply liberally and wipe off (leaving a cleaner chain then you started with), and ideally leave to dry before riding. Can definitely be applied to a dirty chain. Extreme (blue) last pretty well in manky conditions, but does need reapplying after every ride. Benefit for me is that they clean off a chain really easily – quick run through a chain cleaner with some degreaser, wash with water and they’re sparkling. I used Squirt for a few years but ended up hating it due to the build of of wax you get.

Re Fox pads – I’ve been wearing Fox Launch Pro D3o pads for a few years. Most comfy ‘big’ pads that I’ve worn. They have a velcro on hard cap that does a great job of sliding without affecting the fit like a big cap can. The D3o pads are big too – they are very protective pads. Having properly ripped my knee open/apart I’ve just worn pads as a matter of course for the last 13 years for all MTB rides and I’ve ripped enough pads to feel the benefit of something chunky that slides a bit.

They size a bit odd, so measure legs carefully or try them on. They’re bit snug on the thigh compared to the calf fit. Always measure your legs for pads, don’t go on body size!

I have spent a lot of time (and money to be honest) sorting bikes to fit kids at all sort of different sizes. Go to any under 12 road race and you’ll see an array of flipped seatposts, negative stems, narrow bars and short cranks. It’s quite a mazing what you can sensibly get to fit, but it’s only worth doing if the bike is worth doing it for (vs just getting a bike that fits).

Shorter cranks make the biggest difference – can completely change the saddle to bar drop possible, and on a recent MTB build switching to 165mm cranks made the difference between being able to fit a dropper or not. Negative angle stems are great for getting a better position on the road or track (track bike specialists like Velodromeshop are good for those). Seat posts you can flip to have a forward offset are great (and probably just right for a tri bike) – also helps avoid fitting to short a stem that can screw up handling a bit.

So if it’s a nice enough bike to go to the effort on then it should be perfectly doable.

Bikester have been good for me, and Holland Bike Shop (https://hollandbikeshop.com/) who are great for hard to find spares and odd sized chainrings etc

For sub-150mm cranks square taper is definitely the way to go. I’ve had the Thorn ones from SJS, a range of Islabike ones (they do sell them separately, but you might have to pretend to have an Islabike to put them on to avoid awkward questions), and a smattering of BMX cranks. Everything used to be square taper, worked fine and the BBs last for ever. Those Jet ones look fine. If you want something a bit nicer I’ve got LDC cranks on the youngest’s track bike which are CNC’d junior BMX cranks: https://crucialbmxshop.com/ldc-4-bolt-square-taper-cranks

Through axle options can be found, but get very expensive quickly. Cheapest option is probably Sinz (£150), which go down to 140mm https://crucialbmxshop.com/sinz-mx2-cranks

The Croder ones that Kids Racing do look great, but silly money really.

Once they get bigger note that Shimano do direct mount SLX cranks in 165mm now for about £100 (without a ring) – just put some of those on the youngest’s MTB

30T ring will give you a 7% lower bottom end. You’d need to go to a 45 tooth or bigger cassette to get that low with 32T ring. As said – chainring option is miles cheaper to try, plus cassettes are difficult to get hold of at the moment, and your rear mech might not handle a much bigger cassette (depending on what it is)

No …and I wrote it!

* although strictly speaking I didn’t exactly set out to answer that question… editors eh? 😉

Another MR person here and we had an incident yesterday that demonstrates a lot of the quirks and potential pitfalls of W3W and how location information gets handled. Caller had phoned 999 for an ambulance and given a location description, I think the ambulance control call handler may have then generated a W3W (possibly based on postcode – which can cover big areas). The ambulance crew got sent W3W and description, and being familiar with the patch realised the W3W was guff and went straight to location. They also asked control to activate MR and that was triggered via SARCall, but with only the W3W location, which instantly looked wrong as you can’t fall from rocks in the middle of flat fields. Incident Controller then struggled to get through to control room to get the rest of location info (ie description), which we got just before I set off in the wrong direction in a vehicle. Also meanwhile the air ambulance (who probably self tasked) was hovering over the (wrong) W3W location until redirected by the ambulance crew on the ground.*

As said – all in all it’s better to phone the police (who also love W3W btw) as they take the information and pass it straight on with no ‘translation’. Tends to work more smoothly when that happens and the right resources turn up when and where they are needed. W3W is already way too embedded to roll back at all – so we just need to have good ways of cross checking locations and try and make sure call handler training covers what it needs to.

* I had a camera in my face for that one – so now everyone will be able to enjoy my scrabbling in my pockets to find a mask and take a handover from a paramedic after running up a hill 😉

Ours was always a bit pants for shifting too. Gripshift hard to use, especially getting the tension to move into largest sprocket. Eldest child put up with it, but younger one was less tolerant. Swapped for shimano 9 speed set up – that did involve building a new wheel, but the old wheel was fairly knackered by then anyway. Well set up trigger shifter was fine for little hands in our experience.

I double taped my bars ahead of a long (250 mile) 24 hour road ride a good few years ago and have left them like that ever since (bike doesn’t see tons of use). I just fully taped over the existing tape, trimmed the ‘under’ tape a bit around the ends and wrapped the ‘over’ tape into the plugs. I quite like the girth.

Another minimal engineering/spend type here – one old 120cm climbing sling, one 30cm extender and two snap gates. Clipped to workhorse’s camelbak, short sling looped around stem/bars and clipped to long sling. Worked perfectly for two kids. You could probably clipped a multiple loop of shock cord as an extra link if you wanted bounce (I do that as a training aid for a fingerboard), but I never felt the need for it. Both kids now faster than me up most hills 😉

Running Helm 1 at 160mm on my Rocket. Also running significantly lower than the ‘recommended’ pressure – 78kg and 60psi for about 30% sag. Running minimal damping and maximum volume (minimum spacers). Same experience as JonEdwards (on a LLS bike) in that changing the pressure even 5psi each way has minimal impact on measurable sag, but a massive impact on feel. I tried the extra neg pressure and it does make it lovely and supple but too linear and blowing through travel on medium hits too much for me. Would also echo the points about re-equalising the pressure regularly, with a good pull to extend the fork while you’re doing (helps to do it with someone else).

Would something like this work?

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/ALUMINIUM-ROUND-TUBE/192652347100?2de42078b134fc848eab883%7Campid%3APL_CLK%7Cclp%3A2334524

1″ x 14swg – 25.4mm OD with 2mm wall thickness – so only 0.25mm too big ID

A neat cut and it should give you enough leeway, but be snug enough – and only a few quid for a 50mm sample so you could try it for peanuts

Does anyone make hollow bolt through axles? The standard one on my Scandal is solid but I was wondering if I could bodge my trailer onto it by running the QR through a 12mm axle.

Good idea – and yes, a lot of thru axles are hollow, although some not all the way through. The one of my son’s Orange is hollow all the way through, but the Syntace one on my Cotic is closed at the threaded end. Would need a loooong skewer with a boost rear though!

I used a kids trailer a lot (Chariot) and have a BOB Ibex (a Yak with suspension). The bob is better for carrying a heavy load. It’s better off road too if you’re not too worried about rattling the contents about. My Chariot had 20″ wheels and suspension, so was great on rough stuff, but it did get rolled once or twice due the the width. The Ibex has suspension but a much smaller wheel, so does bounce about a but.

That COHO looks great – it ticks a lot of the boxes that were missing on Ibex (like a stand). Of course these features will come at extra weight/complexity – the simplicity of the BOB designs is attractive. Kiddie trailers seem to hold their value well, but I’m not sure about cargo trailers. I think having a good hitch system – solid an easy to use, and being able to cope with a variety of different axle types – would be my top priority if I was buying now. The BOB qr systems is great, and it’s similar with a nutted axle, but for thru axles there’s only an after market adapter (https://www.sjscycles.co.uk/trailers/robert-axle-project-bob-trailer-12mm-thruaxle-m12-x-15-209mm/). Burley do a 12mm thru axle adapter for the COHO (alongside QR and nutted axle)

I’ve had a few pairs of prescription Oakleys before – everyday and riding glasses. I used Oakley prescription lenses for the riding ones, but bog standard opticians stuff for the others. That’s usually where the eye-watering cost of Oakleys come in – but the optics on the Oakley lenses are really very good. I priced up a pair of Field Jackets with Oakley optics through a local (very good) opticians (https://onlookers.co.uk/) and they were nearly 500 quid. I ended up with Adidas Evil Eye Halfrim Pros – a good chunk cheaper then the Oakleys, with Adidas lenses. They were favoured by the opticians – better product and better service as far as they were concerned. Been using them for a year for running and riding and I’ve very happy with them.

It’s with see if you have a local opticians who have experience or specialise in sports stuff. These guys were happy to order stuff in for me to try, and just sent it back if it didn’t suit. The Field Jackets looked great on paper but weren’t right at all when I tried them on.

I think Creigs have integrated headsets? (ie bearings fitted directly into the frame – check for the model year you have) So you can’t really change the headset, just the bearings.

Stick a bigger tyre on it – that can make a big difference.

What they ^^^^ all said about the saddle – I’ve had a few creaks that I eventually pinned down to saddle or saddle rails. Also check chainring bolts – a bit of movement in one of them can generate that sort of sound. May make sense if you’re getting it int he same part of the pedal stroke.

As you can usually only get spokes in 2mm increments the fact that 1mm of thread is showing really doesn’t mean that they’re too short. There’s always a compromise there, and better that you’ve still got thread to use than you run out of thread when tensioning.

I’d be careful of transferring “adult” geometries (designed for experienced adult riders) direct to kids frames. You need to think carefully and realistically about what sort of rider they are and what they want to do on the bike, but there’s certainly room for tinkering!

Islabike geometry is hard to beat in my opinion, but that’s not to say you couldn’t tweak it a bit here and there. But starting with  the Beinn 20 geometry (Pro Series if you can) would be a good way to go. It’s certainly not aimed at proper “trail” riding, so if that’s the aim you maybe could slacken it a bit. But slacken it too much and you’ll lose agility for slow speed riding and play – so you need to be honest about how it’s going to be ridden.

The risk of going too long is that it makes it hard to get on top of for pumping – which is a key skill. Obviously they can do it, but adding too much length will complicate the learning I think. Of course if they’ve got another bike to play about on (maybe a mini BMX type) then that might enough. Adding reach may make the bike last longer of course, but the advantages of moving up to 24″ or 26″ wheels sort of stump that one. I see a lot of 20″ bikes with really long backends – adds stability but makes it harder to pump (see above!) and get the front up. I think a tighter back end (a la Islablike) is better in most situations.

I’ve always aimed to set my kids bike up with the sort of riding position I’d want them to have as an adult – so I’d want to see a low front end.

Oh and make sure you’ve got room for some decent sized rubber!

I’ve got to point out that English and Welsh teams get no government funding, other than sometimes being able apply for some DEFRA grant schemes for water/flood rescue things, and some of the Libor fines have paid for some training initiatives. We maybe get a couple of thousand a year in expenses from the police, but the team has annual running costs of about £45000 – which is just expenses and maintenance, not buying new kit/vehicles etc. We have one of the largest operational areas in the country too, and we scrape up a lot of mountain bikers.

Rescue teams work on a voluntary basis all over the world – that works well as it would be stupid to pay people to do this stuff so intermittently. Would be nice not to have to spend so much time and effort just to get the money together to do it though :-/

TOPIC TANGET ALERT: Mike – it is difficult as the NHS is so strapped for cash. We get some expenses (fuel for team vehicles etc) from the police when they activate us, but not from the ambulance service. But again services in different regions, both police and ambulance, are different and have different demands on their budgets. Apart from those limited expenses from the police and very occasional restock from an ambulance (swapping a gas bottle, grabbing a collar), all the medical supplies we use are paid for through donations. Drugs and medical supplies (as they go out of date) are some of our biggest expenses.

And water, obviously 😉

Absolutely – and I have to say no ambulance crew (or staff) has ever refused me supplies! It’s people a long way from the front line that sometimes have other ideas – all sorted now, although we do sometimes find ourselves knocking on ambulance doors saying “Hey mister – can we have our entonox back” 😉

MR member here (not that team) – I’ve read the whole thread. I’m torn.

Mostly what fransinatra said up there though, but…

1. I probably wouldn’t have refused. If I had to refuse i’d like to think I’d have said why (but shit happens).

2. We run events like this to raise essential funds. I’ve manned feed/water stations where everything gets hoovered up by the first third of the runners stuffing their pockets, and I’ve had people not on the event sneaking food and drinks, and I’ve also had the misfortune to be manning a feed station that has run out of food/water. If you’ve got 400 runners they can get through a lot of water. Now that is horrible as it’s either a massive ballache (eg an hour’s off road drive) to restock from somewhere, or a pile of very unhappy (and underfed and watered) runners. Anyway – you can get very protective of what you have!

3. We provide safety cover to events like this to raise essential funds – but that tends to mean just that, not manning feed stations.

4. MR teams don’t go out looking for customers. If you look like a grown up then it’s assumed you can look after yourself. You have to look pretty bad to get unsolicited help to be honest 😉

And for Drac… our casualties end up as your patients! Sore point here as the local AS wanted to charge us a lot of money for medical gases to give to their patients, usually at their request 😉

And to back up those DIY/tinkering comments.. I ended up with this which I sort of need to sell this now:..

Kona 24″ frame, shortened (ie properly cut down and rebonded) Pace forks (converted to coil, but a Ti coil), 2 x 9 with XTR rapid rise mech and XT shifters, Thorn cranks, Spank rims on SLX hubs, Shimano hydro disks (sub Deore), etc, etc – if anyone’s interested let me know and I’ll sort out proper details

Looking at Orbea’s size guide I would guess it’s pretty conservative and based on standover (ie tope tube clearance when stood on the floor) rather than riding size. For context my 155cm 13 year old has just moved onto a small (adult) Intense Carbine (27.5)  and it fits him well – Orbea’s sizing would have him on a kid’s 26″. His younger brother (8 years old, 130cm) has (since Christmas) moved from 20″ Islabike, through 24″ Kona, and on to the now vacant Trek Fuel Jr (26″ but with a very small frame – I couldn’t stop him – it’s a full sus!)

Whyte’s sizing for their 26″ kids bike is 125-151cm – that’s got a 706mm standover compared to the Orbea’s 713mm

138cm is Islabike’s minimum height for the Creig 26 – they don’t publish useful things like geometry.

Having just seen my youngest go from a 24 to a 26 and the increase in confidence that’s given him on rocky/technical trails I’d say if they can get on the bigger wheel then definitely do it – bit of a game changer.

Semi-integrated so 44mm internal diameter?

There are certainly angle headsets that will fit that – although you might end up with an external top cup, eg:

http://www.workscomponents.co.uk/15-degree-ec44-zs44-angle-headset–to-suit-1-18-steerer-tube-131-p.asp

The superstar one also looks to have a stuiable fit option:

https://www.superstarcomponents.com/en/slackerizer-angle-headset.htm

Best bet is to knock the current one out and measure up

I seem to have had more this year than in the last few years. Had a few “hiding” too when you spot them and realise they must have been there for at least 24 hrs :-/

My renewal came up at the end of last year and I noticed they now excluded all records, CDs, etc from cover. A good 5-6ft of stacked vinyl adds up to a lot so I had to look elswhere. Went to Hiscox in the end. Shame as their bike cover suited me perfectly.

DONE! I was just about to donate anyway then spotted this. It’s a lovely gesture and so worthy of support, and I don’t even want the bike as I’ve already got a SS Klein!

No should have to do this to raise money for health care, which is exactly why it’s great to see people supporting others like this. Good luck

Nice. I’ve been meaning to plot a route like that for years, and now someone (you Gil?) has saved me the trouble 🙂

Yes – but with low expectations 😉

That’s a great result 🙂

(puts hand up as another freebie Paramo wearer)

Good luck from the other side of the country to all the Lakes peeps out looking today – weather looks grim for it :-/

Another vote here for Camelbak Podiums – both kids use them and they’ve survived years of abuse and don’t leak. Well worth the money.

Elite bottles seem particularly prone to breaking (when dropped on the valve end) – which is a shame as they’ve both lost a few treasured team branded bottles that way.

Ordered 23rd, dispatch email on Wednesday, arrived today. I just assumed they’d have a lot of orders to get through!

Got the Ultimate Cleaning kit (about 90 quid’s worth at individual prices) – with free postage, free 2.5 litre cleaner and free bottle… for £32.50. Stupidly good value.

I changed the 7spd gripshift on our old Beinn 20 to XT 9spd triggers (obviously that also involved buidling a new wheel!). An improvement, but still a fairly stiff shift for little hands.

Now the gripshift on the Pro Series Beinn we’ve had on test is a different kettle of fish altogether – that a 10spd GX shift running on a 9spd block and it’s one of the nicest lightest shifting setups you could find – the rider has had no problems shifting and he’s finally properly anticipating changes and moving up and down gears freely. You get what you way for I guess. I’ve not had a play with the recent spec shifters on the normal Beinns though – they may be better now (most stuff is!)

Either way cheap derailleurs can have stiff springs, and cheap shifters can have a lot of friction. I’ve seen both grip and triggers be difficulty for small hands to work, so I don’t think either is a magic bullet. Without significant upgrades the best you can do is optimise the cabling to be as low friction as possible. I used tail ends of Gore cable kits for ages, but I seem to have run out of those now!

As other have said – Frog and Isla are both nice bikes, but you do notice the price difference in the details. They’re only little things but they do add up – like the nipples on our Frog Road 55 rusting, compared to shiny many-year-old nipples on our Islabikes. If you’re going to get picky then the geometry is better on the Islas too – the back end is a bit long on the Frog in comparison – and the Frog is nearly a kilo heavier. That’s what an extra 80 quid does for you.

Orbea look interesting as an alternative – disks and 9speed for the same price as the Beinn 20, plus better off-road tyres from the off: https://www.orbea.com/gb-en/bicycles/mx-20-team-disc-18

wrightyson: Direct from Rocker https://rockerbmx.co.uk/index.php/online-store/mini-bmx/irok-bmx

I think either it’s something they get and it fits with their play or it doesn’t. It’s not a sensible bike in any way at all! He’d been playing on a franken-mini bike he won at the 2015 singlespeeds for a couple of years (kids bike rattlecan sprayed with some BMX bars stuck on!), so this just continued from that 🙂