Bike for 11yr old boy

Ifalloffalot

My lad has outgrown his 24" wheel bike. He is approx 4'11
Now looking for a 26" wheeled hardtail.
Anyone with any suggestions on what size framewise...thinking 14" would be ok??
And has anyone got any experience in what would be good and not too heavy.

bartimaeus

My lad (age 11) has a 13.5" Rockhopper... from eBay. Pretty light, decent kit, but could do with air forks as he's just not heavy enough to get much travel out of the Dart 3s on it at the moment. So yes - a 14 inch bike should be fine... we even tried a 15" ladies Boardman and that would have been OK too.

bartimaeus

... and you can adjust the fit reasonably cheaply - I put a shorter stem, and narrower flat bars on the Rockhopper which helped keep the front end a reasonable height and gave him the same reach he was used to.

WindyG

My 11yr old girl is on a 14" Diamond Back Peak HD, only thing I needed to do was roll the bars back a little and move one 10mm spacer to above the stem, the forks are crap but they'll get changed soon.

One thing to watch out for though is on some small or XS frames there often isn't spacer for a water bottle.

bartimaeus

WindyG wrote:

One thing to watch out for though is on some small or XS frames there often isn't spacer for a water bottle.

Very true... I already had a side-loading bottle cage (like one of these) which is how we got around that issue.