Kids Bikes - Crap vs Quality

[rcintx]

Hello all.

It is time to purchase a new bike for my 5 year old son and I am trying to determine if I want to buy another bike from a big box store or get something a little nicer (Giant/Specialized/Trek/Scott/etc.). The cost difference is somewhere in the neighborhood of 3-4 times. That is a lot of dough a for a couple of summers of riding...

However, I have a 1 month old that will be ready to ride in a few years and I if I can pass something quality down to her, that would make the sting a little easier.

I know how big of a difference going from a Huffy to a Giant made in my life. Is there a similar difference in kids bikes? He is struggling to really ride by himself but wants too really bad. Would a lighter weight bike with better components help as much as I think it will?

Any recommendations for me to look at? I think he would be OK on a 16", but we will need to go to a shop to really tell. I have been searching Craigslist for a used one but am coming up short thus far.

Thanks in advance!

(I did search for similar threads but didn't find much. If I missed them, please point them out to me and I will move on.)

 

[not another subaru guy...]

I have a not quite 5 year old. He is also just learning to ride by himself. He's a bit shorter than the other kids in his class, and I have a 12" yard sale bike, (weighs more than my 29er, no joke), a 20 year old Trek 16" bike that I got off Craigslist for $20, and a Torker 16" that I got for free from the neighbors. He is just a bit too short for the 16 inchers, but can actually ride the 12. They do offer 14" at Target and such, but they are garbage, throw away bikes. The difference in quality is vast, but will a five year old who is just learning be able to gain any advantages? I don't think so. Buy a good quality USED bike from Craigslist, it will save you money, and still be around when the little one is ready to ride as well.

 

[JGregg]

I bought treks for both my daughters when they moved from 12" to 16". They're nice bikes and have decent resale value. That being said, they're ready to move to 20" in about two years and I'm not sure something like a Schwinn or Diamondback wouldn't have been more than sufficient for such a short time.


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[rcintx]

I may need to look at the 14" options. He is a little short for 5. I will keep hunting craigslist. I am all about re-using and keeping a bike out of a landfill.

 

[Herbie]

Another vote for craigslist. You can get a better quality bike for less than the cost of a crappy new one. They fit these bikes for so short a time, they barely have time to break them in, let alone wear them out. As my daughter grows, the old balance bike, etc. go on craigslist and the bigger stuff comes from there. Cycle of life! (pun intended)

 

[BEG]

My recommendation is Islabikes. They've kind of recently made it into the US and they aren't particularly cheap, but the quality of construction is obvious and the level of the components is not what you would expect on a kid's bike. I bought my 3.5 year old an Islabikes Rothan balance bike when he was two and it came with radial spokes, tires with tubes, hubs with actual bearings, presta valves, a cantilever brake with the lever pressure and reach adjusted to a child's grip and other goodies I wouldn't expect on such a simple bike. He took to it like a duck to water and will be ready for a Cnoc model next summer, totally bypassing training wheels. I have a 1.5 year old and another one on the way so the investment is worth it for me. I'd take a look at the Cnoc 14 or 16 for your 5 year old, depending on dimensions:

http://www.islabikes.com/us/bike_pages/cnoc16.html

 

[KlausVanWinkle]

On a 16 inch wheeled bike, I do not think the price difference is going to be worth it. A five-year-old is probably not going to be able to ride it hard enough before he outgrows it. When you buy him a 20 inch bike, you could look at building it your self. Even giant and Frech still use bottom of the barrel parts to build their bikes and Taiwanese frames. They just don't use The absolute cheapest part like a big store would use. Luckily on a 20 inch coaster brake bike there are not a lot of parts. So you could get decent ones and it would not break the bank. But then again thinking about how I treated my 20 inch bike when I was a kid, durability might be more important than anything

 

[calicamper]

Hello all.

It is time to purchase a new bike for my 5 year old son and I am trying to determine if I want to buy another bike from a big box store or get something a little nicer (Giant/Specialized/Trek/Scott/etc.). The cost difference is somewhere in the neighborhood of 3-4 times. That is a lot of dough a for a couple of summers of riding...

However, I have a 1 month old that will be ready to ride in a few years and I if I can pass something quality down to her, that would make the sting a little easier.

I know how big of a difference going from a Huffy to a Giant made in my life. Is there a similar difference in kids bikes? He is struggling to really ride by himself but wants too really bad. Would a lighter weight bike with better components help as much as I think it will?

Any recommendations for me to look at? I think he would be OK on a 16", but we will need to go to a shop to really tell. I have been searching Craigslist for a used one but am coming up short thus far.

Thanks in advance!

(I did search for similar threads but didn't find much. If I missed them, please point them out to me and I will move on.)

Just Picked up a Trek for my 6yr old paid $40 for it original tires still have nubbies on it. Our local moms created a facebook club of sorts thats all about kids gear with some rules and took my wife about a year to find out about it and get into. $375 bike new $40 used. My Daughters prior bike is a specialized we bought from the neighbors around the corner for $20 we looked it up it was $280 bike! The trailer bike we have for my son I paid $60 for its a $340 trailer bike. Get on some of your local parents groups and watch it like a hawk. Yes it seems like there is a sizable difference between the cheap Target store kids bikes and the brand name bikes especially the price! LOL

 

[dman93]

I'm a parent of two kids now grown. Obviously a good used deal skews the price/quality balance, but we moved to low-end branded bikes when our kids grew to 24" size. By that age they would ride more, and keep up with (or beat us) in some technical single track situations and a better quality bike seemed worthwhile. Before that, we had bought a 16" Huffy for our son (single speed coaster brake) and had passed it on to our daughter. It held up very well. Our son outgrew the 24" bike very quickly and moved to my old 26" hard tail, but not before we bought our daughter a 24" Fisher. That bike had Grip-Shift dérailleurs and shifters and both were crap. Maybe a Huffy or Mongoose would have been a better deal. After spending way too much on replacement parts, we bought her a 26" Kona hard tail which she still has 8years later.

 

[p nut]

There is absolutely a difference between a big box store bike and ones from bike shops. I've seen too many issues with big box bikes, that I would not ever consider putting my kids on one. First issue is assembly: Do you think any qualified mechanics are employed at Target? Plenty of pictures online of misrouted cables, fork put on backwards, etc. A kid in my neighborhood bought one, and on the first ride, the crank came off. Just "plop", right off of the bike. Screwed back on, and it fell off again. Don't remember the brand of bike, but they didn't reverse thread the left side crank bolt. There are other issues I won't go into, but I refuse to buy one of those deathtraps.

The extra spent on a good bike, regardless of wheelsize, is worth it to me.

 

[tarditi]

I've see a lot of young kids (my own included) struggle to fight a heavy or poorly designed "cheap" bike.

For younger kids, the weight is really a burden - a 50# kid trying to peddle a 10# bike is like us trying to pedal a moped around.

 

[SDDiver5]

Buy quality. Quality is quality for a reason. Brand names are brand names for a reason. I bought a mountain bike from WalMart when I started college. It broke about 3 months after using it. So I bought a Trek and have had it since 2007 and still ride it.

Get a bike thats a little big for him so he can learn how to ride it and grow into it....then pass it down to your other kid when they are old/tall enough.

Cool times teaching a kid to ride a bike on their own. I remember teaching my little bro in our backyard...good memories.

 

[rcintx]

I've see a lot of young kids (my own included) struggle to fight a heavy or poorly designed "cheap" bike.

For younger kids, the weight is really a burden - a 50# kid trying to peddle a 10# bike is like us trying to pedal a moped around.

This is my issue. I really think he is struggling with the weight and "smoothness" of the bike. He is 5, but he maybe 40 pounds dripping wet. I just don't know if he has the strength, and I don't want him to get frustrated. His friends (most are a year older and much bigger) are riding with ease and he sees that he can't keep up.

 

[fortel]

Lots of good replies here. I believe kids should have bikes to ride. What level of quality is slightly secondary to having access to a bike to ride in my opinion. I would rather see a kid on a cheap, low-quality bike than not having a bike at all because budget doesn't allow for a (insert brand name here).

In our case, me and my wife both have biked for many years and know how much difference the quality of the bike can make. That said, we didn't spring for really nice bikes during the rapid 12" to 16" to 20" wheel jumps. He was growing pretty fast when he got too big for the 20" bike, but me and my LBS couldn't see buying a 24" bike that he might ride one season before being ready to jump onto a longer term 26" bike. I ended up putting him on a Specialized Hardrock, 26" wheels on a 15" frame. We dropped the seat post all the way down and I replace the stem and bars to shorter versions which was pretty cheap to do. Wasn't perfectly ideal but it worked and in a little more than a year put the original cockpit back in place and got 3 more years out of the bike before he jumped up to a 29er version of the Hardrock that he's been riding ever since. The current bike will easily take him through college campus years and if it gets stolen along the way it won't be such a huge loss based on the number of years he will have been riding it.

One thing to consider is how much will the kid ride the bike. For those who spend a lot of time riding and obviously enjoy it, I would be willing to spend a little more. But in the end just make sure they have a bike, any bike, to get outside with and ride.

For the upcoming 1 month old, if you haven't already, consider one of the strider-type bikes. I wish I had known about them with our son. Seems like they make the move to pedaling a two-wheel bike much easier without the sometimes hard transition from training wheels. The owner of my LBS has a son who went from a strider straight to riding a 12" bike at three years old without ever using training wheels.

 

[rkj__]

Some of the name brand kids bikes really are not great either, but if nothing else, they usually are assembled by competent staff.

Some cheap bikes get outrageously heavy when they try to make them look cool. A 5 year old does not need suspension. Any suspension components that come on kids bikes are more of a weight penalty than a functional part in many cases.

Here is an example of a bike I would not recommend.