Road bike for a 9 year old

[hobbitonabike]

Since OH and I have gotnour road bikes our 9year old is now fancying one and he is really enjoying his cycling. We are trying to decide whether to go for a road bike or a hybrid and were after a bit of advice from those who had been there and done that. Have had a look around online and seen a few road bikes...Islabikes, Raleigh and Viking. Are there any gems we're missing or turkeys we should avoid? Any advice would be very much appreciated.

 

[Beebo]

I have no experience of this bike but decathlon do a kids road bike, it should be good as all their other bikes get good reviews.
http://www.decathlon.co.uk/triban-junior-id_8129804.html

 

[Sara_H]

Hi EbonyWiilow, we're in te same position as you, looking to get our son a road bike for his birthday/christmas.

Having sat him on a few we've decided to go for Islabikes as the reach/brakes seem easier for him - the decathlon bike that fitted him seemed cause him problems reaching the bralkes. Also he finds the gears on his hybrid difficult to fathom, the Islabikes seem to be a simpler set up.

So decision made, I now need to sell a kidney in order to afford the blummin thing!

 

[hobbitonabike]

Thanks guys. Which Islabike are you looking at Sara? He's fast enough on his Halfords beast that we wish he'd never bought...dread to think what he'll be like on a road bike lol.

 

[hobbitonabike]

That 'we' bought, that should say! Wish he was buying his own lol

 

[derrick]

Saw one of these last weekend, looked like a proper road bike.
http://www.hargrovescycles.co.uk/products.asp?partno=45223

 

[Doseone]

I've not heard a bad word about Islabikes. They are expensive, but you get what you pay for and they have good resale value too.

The only thing I wonder is whether a road bike for a 9 year old is too limiting? What I mean is that if you get a road bike, you can really only ride on the road, and if your 9 year old is anything like my 9 year old he won't want to just stick to riding on the road.

If you want to stay with Islabikes you could go for something like the Beinn 26 small which would still be pretty good on the road, but would also be up to some light off road use as well.

Buying a bike for your kids is even more fun than getting one for yourself so happy shopping

 

[Sara_H]

I've not heard a bad word about Islabikes. They are expensive, but you get what you pay for and they have good resale value too.

The only thing I wonder is whether a road bike for a 9 year old is too limiting? What I mean is that if you get a road bike, you can really only ride on the road, and if your 9 year old is anything like my 9 year old he won't want to just stick to riding on the road.

If you want to stay with Islabikes you could go for something like the Beinn 26 small which would still be pretty good on the road, but would also be up to some light off road use as well.

Buying a bike for your kids is even more fun than getting one for yourself so happy shopping

Well my son will be keeping his Dawes Tracker for everyday use, he's joining a racing club and the Islabikes is to be used only for training/racing!

Its the LUath 700 small we plan to order, EbonyWillow, the next size down was too small for him.

 

[Doseone]

Well my son will be keeping his Dawes Tracker for everyday use, he's joining a racing club and the Islabikes is to be used only for training/racing!

Its the LUath 700 small we plan to order, EbonyWillow, the next size down was too small for him.

Did you go to Islabikes for a fitting? Their fitting is supposed to be really good and you can test ride the bikes.

 

[Sara_H]

No, he tried the smaller sized one that belonged to a friend, but it was too small.

We've measured him and he's just below the lower recommended sizes for the 700 small, so it gives him room go grow (he's growing very quickly at the moment).

 

[Andy_R]

We're in a similar positionm and are looking at the Luath 26 - a lot of the younger riders at his club are using either the 26 or the 700 - don't forget using a bike that is just a bit too big can be every bit as uncomfortable and hard to control as using one that's too small (thinking of reach especially). Buying a bike that "they'll grow into" can often be bad practise, and if you're buying an Islabike you can always re-sell it later on for a good chunk of what you paid for it.

 

[Sara_H]

We're in a similar positionm and are looking at the Luath 26 - a lot of the younger riders at his club are using either the 26 or the 700 - don't forget using a bike that is just a bit too big can be every bit as uncomfortable and hard to control as using one that's too small (thinking of reach especially). Buying a bike that "they'll grow into" can often be bad practise, and if you're buying an Islabike you can always re-sell it later on for a good chunk of what you paid for it.

Yes its a bit of a toss up between buying a bike that will only be any use for a few months and one that he may have to wait a short while to use (he's not going to be getting smaller!)
Realisticly, he's not going to be using it that much til spring anyway, so we decided to go with the latter option. he's litterally 1 cm below the recomended minimum height, I'm sure he grows that much overnight sometimes!

 

[summerdays]

When I bought a Beinn 24 a few years ago, we went along to the old Islabike location to see how far off the 24 he was. According to the measurements on the website it was too big for him but I was wondering if it was close to growing into it for Christmas (6 months later or whether to wait till the following year). We arrived and just by looking at him they got out a 20".

I said I wanted to see how far away from the 24 he was and she looked again and said he might just fit, and was he a confident rider? So she got it out and put the saddle to it's lowest position, and smallest Summerdays hopped on, rode straight across the car park, through every pothole and puddle he could find (there were some big ones in the old location!), and loved it. Her smiling comment - I take it you want mudguards with the bike? So my purchase came a lot earlier than I expected by 6 months to a year.

What I'm trying to say is that the figures aren't everything, try the bike if you can to see is worth it. We did buy the next Islabike Luath 26 fractionally too large (he could ride it but felt a bit stretched out) when we had the opportunity to buy one second hand, but then he hadn't outgrown the other one at the time. He used the bike for 3 years - well worth the price we paid.

 

[Boris Bajic]

It's worth a net trawl searching for a frame size. I got a nice little Trek 1.2 (previous year's model) from Evans or similar.

I'd been looking for ages and was simply not impressed by what i saw on IslaBikes' website and what I saw of their product among friends' children and in bike racks. I didn't (and still don't) get the hysteria. it reminds me a little of the enthusiasm for Cath Kidston kitchenware some years ago. Quite inexplicable yet the product and the lust for it were ubiquitous.

All 3 kids rode the baby Trek from 9-11 or 11-13 (daughter).

There can be issues with brake-level size, but not big issues. Many children have a bit of a reach issue the first time they use a certain set of levers, but this goes very quickly. It can be exagerrated by the unfamiliar layout of the bars and levers, so a non-issue can appear to be an issue. It's the same with crank length, although this Trek was on 165s, which was nice. Some retailers or manufacturers make a big deal of lever reach. Put a kid on a bike with a big reach to the levers and after two or three rides round a car park, they're totally at home. Mine were descending at speed on the Malvern Hills with a bike whose levers were (according to some child-friendly retailers) way too big for them. The main issue is geometry of frame, seat stem, bars. The adult-sized levers were fine for tiny 9-year-old hands.

On a first road bike, height difference between saddle and bars is something to consider. The bum-in-clouds riding position takes some getting used to, so you sort of morph them into it over a few weeks. Lots of sodding about with Allen Keys and much patience required of the child, but comfort is key and so is confidence. They will be chucking it into corners and whipping down the hills in no time.

The Trek I bought had 650c wheels, which I hated when I saw it, but got to love as they lent it some scale and made the ultimate transition to 700cs on a bigger frame more of a natural progression.

You will not get many years out of a road bike bought for a 9-year-old. Mine was for 3 children in succession, so there was less of a cost per user.

Bought for £390 and sold for £270, some years later. I think that was good value at slightly over £30 per child who used it.

Along the way I bought a couple of stems for it as kids grew. I still have those.

Everyone makes different choices and I may have done completely the wrong thing. But it worked for us. All the kids still ride road bikes, one of them in (fairly modest) competition.

Caution: After almost any other type of bike, a road bike is very 'darty'. It changes direction when you blink. You will no longer be aware of this if you've been on one for a while... but when you first ride one it is a stark contrast. Make sure the kids know this.

 

[hatler]

When I bought a Beinn 24 a few years ago, we went along to the old Islabike location to see how far off the 24 he was. According to the measurements on the website it was too big for him but I was wondering if it was close to growing into it for Christmas (6 months later or whether to wait till the following year). We arrived and just by looking at him they got out a 20".

I said I wanted to see how far away from the 24 he was and she looked again and said he might just fit, and was he a confident rider? So she got it out and put the saddle to it's lowest position, and smallest Summerdays hopped on, rode straight across the car park, through every pothole and puddle he could find (there were some big ones in the old location!), and loved it. Her smiling comment - I take it you want mudguards with the bike? So my purchase came a lot earlier than I expected by 6 months to a year.

What I'm trying to say is that the figures aren't everything, try the bike if you can to see is worth it. We did buy the next Islabike Luath 26 fractionally too large (he could ride it but felt a bit stretched out) when we had the opportunity to buy one second hand, but then he hadn't outgrown the other one at the time. He used the bike for 3 years - well worth the price we paid.

We had exactly the same experience with a Beinn 26. The Islabikes sizing chart showed mini-hatler as being about 2 to 3 cm off the minimum size (inside leg).

When we got it I put the saddle as low as it could go and straight away he complained that the saddle was too low. Hoicked it up a couple of cms and he was off (he was a pretty confident rider by this point). However, he did drop himself on to the top tube shortly afterwards which rather proved that the Islabike sizing is more about top tube clearance than leg vs saddle/pedal measurement. He didn't do that again !