kids bikes are awful heavy++

[jawaka]

My neighbour's son aged 8 doesn't really like going out on his bike; she takes him and his twin sister together. She asked me to look at her son's bike as it was stuck in top gear. I fixed the cable which had come off, adjusted the brakes so they weren't rubbing and blew up nearly flat tyres. She is widowed so you couldn't really expect her to keep up routine maintenance, but what really amazed me is how heavy the thing is, I reckon it's the same weight as my tourer and definitely heavier than my audax. Of course it looks the part with full suspension , fat knobblies and large diameter tubes with unnecessary extra bracing, (all in steel.), so I'm not surprised he doesn't find it much fun to ride even with working gears.
I suppose the industry is selling what kids want, but there's not much choice according to my local bike shop, and these sort of kid's bikes are going to make a lot of them give up.

[Whippet]

Totally agree, even small kids bikes can weigh a tonne. I'm told that Islabikes kids bikes are the ones to go for.

[Mr. Viking]

the last bike my parent's bought me was full suspension, large diameter aluminium tubes with knobbly tyres, 21 twist grip deraileur gears and weighed a tonne. I had asked for a bike for my birthday (can't remember which, probably about 12th or 13th) and had my eye on a black one with front suspension and a more conventional frame, and 18 gears with normal levers. My parents bought me the fancier bike because it was "more bike for the money". I still don't know if the other bike would have been better than the one I got, but being a simpler design for the same price I would imagine so. I hated my bike and never wanted to ride it. Nearly put me off cycling for life.

[Mick F]

I was riding a Raleigh Chopper recently ........... you may have heard about my JOGLE on it.

I rode that infernal machine for over 1,500miles whilst I owned it, and the weight of the thing was one of the many problems I had.

It weighed a whopping 44lbs.

This is a kids' bike for goodness sake! I had terrible problems getting it in and out of the shed!

[Mr. Viking]

I was riding a Raleigh Chopper recently ........... you may have heard about my JOGLE on it.

That was you? I found the story about your trip quite inspiring, as I ride a heavy, hub geared bike. Congratulations for sticking with it

[NUKe]

THere are lighter kids bike around Islabike being only one example. Pukky and Giant also do reasonably light weight models. Kids bikes in the UK tend to be bought as toys, where as on the continent they are seen as transport. You can't expect to cheap, light and strong you can have 2 out 3.
My son has a Giant MTX which I managed to find one of the last ones without a suspension fork, these a re quite light and have reasonable componentry. Isla Rowntree develops here bikes specially for kids and has only recently done an adult bike. Isla bike are light have controls to suit kids hand sizes and have sensible gears.

[easyroller]

Raleigh Chopper recently ........... weighed a whopping 44lbs

Damn! That's about the same weight as both of my bikes combined!

[Mick F]

Yes.
44lbs
Just for a bike!

If you're interested, read my blog of the trip. Sorry, but blogs are back-to-front to read in retrospect. I'm in the process of re-writing it the correct way round and TBH not gone back to it for a while. Maybe I should.

Here's the original, but start at the bottom and work your way up to get in order.
http://jogleonachopper.blogspot.com

[eileithyia]

First bike I bought for Andrew, considering he was a skinny little 3 yr old was massively heavy! Really shocked me, poor kids have not only to learn to balance but to hold the weight of these bikes up, fancy balance bikes and Islabikes were not available then..

[Geriatrix]

I rode that infernal machine for over 1,500miles whilst I owned it, and the weight of the thing was one of the many problems I had.

It weighed a whopping 44lbs.

With or without the concrete block?

[Mick F]

Without!

For the uninformed, I rode that machine whilst towing my trailer, and I had front panniers with telephone directories in and a concrete block in the trailer. I think the whole rig weighed in at just above 1cwt. Good job I'd modified the gearing!

This is me at Rundlestone Cross near Princetown - 1,500ft above sea level. One heck of a pull up Pork Hill!

[Audax67]

Our club ran a cycling school until the end of last year. Most of the kids were under 12. We taught them riding technique and basic maintenance, put them in for the regional proficiency competitions, took them out for weekends in the mountains and held Christmas parties. We supplied cycling jerseys and hi-viz vests, and we even had a supply of helmets for those who had none. Some of them really loved it and kept it up through their teens and into their 20s, becoming instructors themselves.

For most of them, though, our school was simply a place to be stored while their parents did something else for the afternoon. The parents, seeing us as a child-minding service and little more, spent the minimum on kit, which meant the cheapest of supermarket bikes, mostly Chinese and Indian jobs made of the cheapest materials and usually weighing 16 kilos or more. Seeing a 7-year-old trying to haul a 16-kilo bike up a muddy track in the forest is painful, but if his daddy isn't going to spend more than 70€ then that's that.

In the end we jacked it in - too demoralizing.

This is one of the regional competitions:
http://cyclotourisme67ffct.free.fr/actu ... index.html

Our bunch are in green and yellow.

I strayed away from the OP's question a bit, the answer to which is that most of the parents are cheapskates and cheap means heavy.

[meic]

In defence of cheapskates.

I buy a bike for myself and I can get use of it until I die. If I buy a bike for my daughter, I may get as little as one summers riding out of it and she may choose that she doesnt even want to ride it for half of that.

I wasted a lot of time making up good bikes for my son to ride once or twice.

[661-Pete]

I vaguely remember my first bike ('proper' bike that is, not tricycle) - around 1958. It was a Hercules, and looked broadly similar to this one:

single speed, rod brakes, and all that - except that it was scaled down to junior size and I think had a more modern saddle. It also probably cost a little bit more than the price in the advert!

The thing is - in those days kids bikes were merely adult bikes built a bit smaller. And of course we as kids took great delight in getting on a bike 'just like the grown-ups do'. I can't vouch for how much it weighed (with singlespeed I was walking up some hills) but we're not talking concrete-block stuff...

(*sigh*) the good old days...

[Audax67]

In defence of cheapskates.

I buy a bike for myself and I can get use of it until I die. If I buy a bike for my daughter, I may get as little as one summers riding out of it and she may choose that she doesnt even want to ride it for half of that.

I wasted a lot of time making up good bikes for my son to ride once or twice.

Sure, but the kids I'm talking about were riding every week during the school term, and outgrown or unwanted bikes could be sold on within the club. Nevertheless the parents saw no point in getting anything better than supermarket grade. They also went for the full-suspension models - probably because the kids wanted lots of doo-hickeys - when hardtails would have suited them much better.