Children's Bikes

[Mick F]

We have a five (an a half) year old grandson, and we want to buy him his first bike. He has a balance bike but AFAIK hasn't really used it ............... for a variety of reasons not worth pursuing at this point.

When he gets a real bike, I will teach him to ride.

We just happened to be passing Halfords yesterday and popped in to see what was what - re boy's bikes.

I was slightly appalled TBH due to the pink for girls and the macho look for the boys. Where are the "normal" bikes? Where are the "androgynous" bikes that aren't MTB/BMX orientated? Just a BIKE please? Do they exist?

Any road up, we saw this one.
http://www.halfords.com/cycling/bikes/k ... ys-bike-16
Not happy really, but it's cheap enough and seems well put together. Pity about the V brakes, but hey-ho. I'd prefer standard easy-to-set-up calipers.

Any comments or advice please?

[Si]

Any comments or advice please?

remove the stunt pegs if you want any paintwork left on your door frames

[Mick F]

The one we saw in the shop didn't have them.
Maybe they didn't want their door frames damaging!

[robgul]

Perhaps not in the price bracket that you would consider BUT Islabikes are THE bikes for children - they have scaled down components and are lightweight. They are designed by Isla Rowntree and sold direct.

We have 3 grand-children and I took the view that an investment in decent bikes was no bad thing - the children will enjoy riding and not be put off by heavy/ugly hard-to-ride machines (like most of the kids' bikes that are on sale) - I've been proved correct.

The deal with my daughters is that I will finance and provide the bikes for their children, they will look after them and I'll have them back when they've been passed on to a sibling and grown out of. All the machines I have were purchased on ebay .. a couple have gone back that way ... rule of thumb is that I'll get back about 70% of my original outlay. At present I have 5 machines (2 of which are waiting for a child to grow into)

... there is also another brand, Frog bikes, that some bike shops stock - I've not looked at these but I think they are close to Islabikes in quality etc.

Rob

[TrevA]

+1 for Islabikes. They are expensive to buy but they have a good 2nd hand resale value, so you get a fair proportion of your money back. Properly designed with scaled down components, they are reasonably light too, which isn't true of most children's bikes.

If and when we have grandchildren, they'll be getting Islabikes from us!

If you must buy from Halfords, then buy from the Carrera range rather than the Apollo range.

[RickH]

My LBS has Frog bikes & they seem quite good. I was helping lead a ride today & one family had Hoy bikes for their kids (age 6 & 9) which seemed quite decent too. IIRC Hoy are exclusive to Evans.

Rick.

[Mick F]

Thanks guys.
Islabikes eh?
http://www.islabikes.co.uk/products/bik ... n-20-small
Why have gears for a five year old?
Same bike please, but single speed.

This is better, but perhaps a little small.
Next size up has gears.
https://www.frogbikes.com/lightweight-k ... rog48.aspx
What inside leg does this one go up to?

[531colin]

Thanks guys.
Islabikes eh?
http://www.islabikes.co.uk/products/bik ... n-20-small
Why have gears for a five year old?
Same bike please, but single speed..............

If it had horizontal dropouts, you could take the gears off, and re-fit them in a year or two. Much cheaper than buying a singlespeed and converting it to gears. I used to do this for customers kids.

[Vorpal]

If you aren't going to pop for Islabikes, just get one off freecycle or something. Likely you can get something just as good as Halford's has and you might get lucky and find something a bit better. Mini V's first pedal bike came from someone on Freecycle. Littlest is riding it now. Mini V's second bike is a ~1960 Dawes that I bought off Ebay for £20 and refurbished. That's a shopper style one, and quite adaptable, so I probably won't get her anything else until Littlest grows into the Dawes.

As for the gears.... just put it in the easy gear and leave it. Teach him to use them in a year or two when he's ready.

[Des49]

Seems like things haven't moved on since we looked for our girls a while ago now.

The LBS only seemed to have heavy mtb style bikes, big knobbly tyres and suspension. I wanted mudguards, carrier and a bike they could go on rides with us or go to school on, not something so heavy and difficult to pedal that it would put them off.

In the end we got a couple of Islabikes, a Benin 24" and a 26". These have served us really well and I recommend them. In fact, may be a bit early for you Mick, but the 24" is now available to pass on, just haven't got around to selling it yet. Served a careful female owner from about the age of 6/7 until she was about 13/14.

[Tangled Metal]

The frog bikes looked good at a large bike shop I was in today. Made me wish our son was old enough for it.

[ambodach]

Do not underestimate the child's ability to use gears. I got a Dawes with a double chainring and 8 (I think) on the back for our 6 yr old grandson.He had no trouble managing the gears as did his younger sibling when he got his new bike. Most kids nowadays can manage quite sophisticated computers so gears on a bike are a doodle. The usual advice applies. If you cannot manage your iPhone ask an 8 year old. The oldest grandchild has just got a Frog from the LBS but I have not yet seen it so cannot yet pass any opinion on it.

[Mick F]

Thanks guys, good advice as usual.

We have been scouring the local freecycle places, we even have a Facebook system locally for swaps/trades etc. Nowt is showing up as yet.

As for gears, I'm sure the lad can manage them, but he's not even balanced on his scooter yet so really needs to develop the two-wheel balance let alone the skill of turning pedals and using brakes.

When our girls were little, they had Triang(?) tricycles in the living room from age 2 or 3 and eventually graduated to outside in the garden. Then we had a bigger tricycle for pavements etc. By the time they learnt to ride on two wheels, they had all the skills necessary ......... steering, brakes, pedalling, speed, transport etc etc. Our grandson has none of those skills.

There's nothing wrong with him, he's as bright as a button, but due to living where they did, he never really got out to do the cycling thing, plus his father never ever ever had a bike and has no interest in them at all. Now they've moved house ............ nearer here .............(and divorced) .............. I can take charge and teach him. (The grandson, not the ex-husband!)

[Bonefishblues]

Do not underestimate the child's ability to use gears. I got a Dawes with a double chainring and 8 (I think) on the back for our 6 yr old grandson.He had no trouble managing the gears as did his younger sibling when he got his new bike. Most kids nowadays can manage quite sophisticated computers so gears on a bike are a doodle. The usual advice applies. If you cannot manage your iPhone ask an 8 year old. The oldest grandchild has just got a Frog from the LBS but I have not yet seen it so cannot yet pass any opinion on it.

This - part of me wished that our daughter had already graduated to the next (geared) Islabike model with gears when she was defeated by a couple of sharp hills at the recent Blenheim chaos-as-a-cycling event. She hasn't yet learned to stand on the pedals, but can already spin like a good 'un, and regularly runs out of gear

[pjclinch]

Local geography has quite an impact. We stay on a fair sized hill, and going from a single-speed to a geared bike at around age 6 made a very big difference to our daughter. The first geared bike was from a local recycler and it was an okay but nothing special Falcon. The following Christmas it was on to an Islabike Beinn 20 (L), and the difference that made up the hill was very clear. We eventually sold it on for a substantial percentage of what it originally cost, and upgraded to a Beinn 26 (S), which again was excellent in use and sold on for a very good price.
So if hills are involved locally, gears are useful and with suitable instruction children can learn to use them well.

I tend to see kids' bikes a bit later on (in a Bikeability context, Primary 6/Year5, 10-11 years), and what's pretty clear there is that those geared bikes with triples are a liability aside from the few using them to do Actual Mountain Biking. If you do get gears then the single chainwheel is The Way Forwards. One also sees that the quality of Islabike gearing makes a tangible difference to how well they work in the Real World, with the BSOs having gears so stiff as to be nearly impossible for the kids to use, and the IBs changing easily and cleanly.

Doing Go-Ride coaching it's also clear that most children, even the cycling-keen, don't really understand gears (I certainly didn't when I was a kid!), so unless you're going to teach their use I'd say there's a fair argument to avoid them.

The last Bikeability sessions I did, aside from the Proper Mountain Bikes run by the keenies, the best Sensible Bike was probably a B'Twin (Decathlon's brand). Nothing fancy, but nothing wrong with it and it worked at a sensible price. They do single-speed 20" bikes as well as geared ones.

Pete.