Bike's for my son and daughter

gt3mad

Hi,

It's my son's birthday In 2 weeks time and he wants a bike, and so does my daughter her birthday is in a months time.

Any ideas wat bike makes and price range should I be looking at, My son is 14 in two weeks time and my Daughter is 11 in a months time.

Cheers gt3 mad

sc999cs

Go into a bike shop and take a look.

Let your children choose a style they fancy as opposed to anything practical because they'll have more fun if it is what they want. My 11 year old son wanted a full suspension mountain bike so we bought him an Apollo FS (17" frame) from Halfords. I wouldn''t ride it myself but he loves it. If I forced him to have a hybrid I doubt he'd enjoy it nearly so much.

I think full suspension MTBs or BMX are very popular with children of those ages.

Steve C

Cunobelin

The ultimate "kids bikes" are from Islabikes

Halfords etc tend to do heavy wokhorses as opposed to decent bikes for kids. The LBS will probably offer better

However as above - they must be involved in the choice......

caw35slr

I second Islabikes, although you're elder child has probably outgrown them. Isla Rowntree's philosophy is simple enough:

- build them light
- build them with components sized for kids

For the former, she shuns full suspension for kids on the grounds that children are too light to warrant the extra weight of a suspension fork and a shock. Instead she goes for bigger wheels at an earlier age which delivers weight savings, increases stability and irons out the bumps. Her frames are aluminium and are not oversized, that being nothing more than a weight-gaining styling exercise on a kids bike.

My kids have a Beinn 26 and a Beinn 24. They adore them. The bikes are really rather special and it's easy to figure out why you see so many Islabikes amongst the adult crank-heads at places like Swinley Forest. They also hold their resale value, which helps.

Let your children choose a style they fancy as opposed to anything practical

Hmm, up to a point. If I were you I'd do him a big favour and try to steer him away from those steel-fabricated-to-look-like-oversized-aluminium framed full-sussers. Some of them weigh more than Saturn and may put him off cycling for good.

we bought him an Apollo FS (17" frame) from Halfords. I wouldn''t ride it myself but he loves it. If I forced him to have a hybrid I doubt he'd enjoy it nearly so much.

Full bounce to hybrid is quite a leap! There are plenty of options in between. Try going to more than one bike shop. Look at the Dirt Jump end of the MTB spectrum - they're cool, tough looking and you'll get a better bike for your money than you will for a similarly-priced bouncer (suspension forks and shocks - even cr*p ones - cost money).

Questions:

What do his mates ride?
What's your budget?
How tall is he?

caw35slr

Oh, and there's a lot more on buying a MTB in the BikeRadar MTB Buying Advice Forum in general and this thread in particular.

They mention the Mongoose Tyax Comp which is available today for £239 at Evans. Picture here.

Mike Healey

Full sus bikes for kids are, by and large, piles of cat poo. They're ridiculously heavy, the suspension hardly moves and has no damping, so they can act rather like a pogo stick . The makers save money by specc'ing cheap'n'nasty components to make up fo rthe extra cost of the suspension.

Go Islabikes if the cash allows - they have very, very, good resale price, by the way.

Steveen

If the local bike club has kids coaching take em down there and see what thier potential mates are riding.