Childrens bikes

[cisamcgu]

Well, after much thought, and many visits to various bike shops, we have, in the end, gone for this :

http://www.islabikes.co.uk/bike_pages/beinn26.html

It will arive in 3 weeks time (they are very busy it seems - which must be a good thing!)

Miss Cisamcgu and I went down yesterday to visit Islabikes, and she got to ride on the Beinn24 and the 26. Both seemed fine, but obviously the 26 will give us a few years growing room. Isla was very, very pleasant, helpful, and friendly - the whole visit, even though it lasted only about 45mins (and left me almost £300 poorer), was a delight.

Miss Cisamcgu can hardly wait for it to arrive

Many thanks to everyone



Andrew

 

[Mr Pig]

I think those Islabikes look great, I think you've made a wise choice. Perfect for kids I reckon.

We've got three 24' bikes in the shed, a specialized, a Scott and a Giant and all I would say is don't buy a Giant!

After seeing the shocking quality of the this Giant kids bike I would never buy any Giant bike of any size on principal. The rear dropouts are so uneven that if you fit the back wheel right into them it's completely squinty. Not a little, miles out. I never ever managed to get chain not to drop off the small cog at the back but the worst thing was the brakes.

My son came in one day and reported that he'd pulled the brakes and 'bang', no front brake! When I investigated it turned out that the hole in the cable retaining braket on the levers was too big and the niple had pulled right through it! I am so disgusted with what Giant are happy to sell to kids that I will never buy a bike from them.

Both the Specialized and Scott bikes are good quality, I'd say the Specialized is slightly better, but to be honest I would've bought an Islabike if I'd seen them at the time. Our kid's bikes have suspension forks and are not light bikes, why does an eight-year-old need a suspension fork!

 

[mickle]

One of my colleagues received his daughter's 20" Bienn yesterday. They've recently upgraded to 7spd cassette now rather than 6 screw-on free-wheel. He got it with rack, mudguards and her name, in matching font, on the top tube. What a stunning little bike.

 

[Globalti]

Bought an Islabike for our son last summer (we went to the shop) and it's excellent. It rides really nice and fast, the weight isn't excessive, it's different enough that it gives him street cred with his pals (it got admired and tried by lots of kids when he took it to school) and it's beautifully built. No regrets at all, we will Ebay it when he outgrows it and buy the next size up.

 

[minemapper]

This thread and a few other rave reviews led us to choose an Isla Beinn 20 for our 6yr old this week. He picked out the accessories that he wanted and called them himself. I assured the chap who answered that it was a legit call, and then let D place the order. Then he handed the phone back to me when it was credit card time (what have I started there, eh?).

Came into my office this morning, and he had the big picture from their website up on the screen, and was just sitting there admiring it.

Next week can't get here quickly enough.....

 

[badkitty]

He's going to love it! Got my wee one a Beinn 20 a couple of weeks ago, for her 6th birthday in 2 weeks.
(Could hardly let her spend the summer on a crap barbie bike then give her the Isla bike 3 days after school starts again, could I? That would've been mean..

One weird thing - I got her name put on the top tube, and one of my friends was totally freaked out and convinced that mini kitty will be abducted because people will know her name now... Bonkers...

I think I'd rather take that chance and have a 6 year old who is learning how to deal with traffic and roads etc which is a far bigger danger to kids than being abducted by people with exceptionally good eyesight.
(It is very small and obstructed by her leg anyway..)

 

[Jonathan M]

My daughter has outgrown her bike, and needs a new one (24") - are there any brands to look out for/avoid like the plague, or is everything much of a muchness at this level ?

Thanks
Andrew

(p.s. Does anyone do hub gearing rather than derailleur in a childrens bicycle range ?)

I've recently been in this position with my son, he is a tall nearly 9 year old who has been tooling around on a 20" 5 speed "MTB" from Decathlon. He's needed a bigger bike for a little while, so we went to our LBS (Thatto Cycles in St Helens) thinking we'd look at a 24", but the guys there sat him on some 24"s and the problem was that with the saddle on full height he was still too tall for them! So we're jumping from a 20" to a 26" MTB (14" frame) Raleigh Roam, in time I'm sure he will progress to something better & bigger frame wise, but at the moment for him it is still just mostly playing out with mates, so we'd decided not to go for a "big name" bike simply because of the abuse it would be given,plus sadly the risk of being nicked!

I'd say avoid anything full suspension, make sure your daughter can use the shifters and avoid the trap of getting a frame too big that "they'll grow into". Thats the main reason that we've not gone for a specialist kids bike like an Islabike because if he carries on with anything like his current growth we could be changing bikes once a year, don't mind doing that with this Raleigh but anything much more expensive would make me go pale!

As an aside he's got a Decathlon 7.0 kids road bike that we've converted into a flat bar commuter for the school run, he loves that & that is his main ride anyway. I have a feeling that he's more likely to err towards the road riding side of things - he loves watching the TDF already!

In the past I would have agreed about Decathlon kids bikes being superb VFM but we looked at the Stockport branch a coupleof weeks ago and TBH were not seeing much difference between what they had in store and due to the £-euro exchange rate I'm nolonger sure that Decathlon holds its place very well, unless you can get one of the price deals.

 

[minemapper]

Does this look like a happy kid, or what?

I'm amazed at the quality, light weight, and well it fits him. He's been doing laps of the driveway for an hour now. As soon as I can, we're off for a ride.

 

[Globalti]

*sniff* Lovely picture of a proud child. Made my eyes a bit watery...