‘If the kids are out riding, they will never be divided! ‘
Sham69 sang that (or something fairly similar) back in 1978 and it still rings true today!
Man am I glad I’m not being raised as a kid in 2021. My generation is the last to be able to remember a world without internet and we’re definitely better for it. I can still remember being stood in the garden and hearing the ungodly squeal of dad’s new dial up internet in the attic, connecting for the first time, the sound of a rapidly changing world seared across my eardrums in real time!
The way I see it the early 90’s were the last golden age to be a child. As a kid I had freedoms that if I had my own kids today I wouldn’t be able to give them even if I wanted to. There were two older kids than me who lived up the road, Gavin and Jamie (shout out Gav for still riding every weekend all these years later!), and we used to spend every day OUTSIDE! There were a couple of primary schools within a few minutes walk of our houses, and many an hour was whiled away playing “Relivo Save All” and “Manhunt” (no not the controversially violent video game, the perfectly innocent children’s game). There was a field behind the library, across the road from our houses. This was our sanctuary whenever it was a bit too late to go to one of the schools to eke out the last gasps of those halcyon summer days. We’d chase each other around or play football for hours in the long grass, sometimes the guys from the factory over the fence would come out and play keepyuppy over the fence. Absolutely golden memories!
My distaste for authority was also born in that field, when one day without any warning a huge digger rolled into the field and started cutting huge swathes of our play area away. We voiced our anger and were told that the field we’d spent so long playing in was to be turned into the disabled car park for the library and town hall.
As a grown adult this seems perfectly reasonable as the previous car park was on a steep hill with no disabled access to the building, but as an eight year old about to lose his football pitch to a giant faceless machine it was heartbreaking as well as infuriating. We’d had no say in what was going to happen to this field, and we were the ones that used it every day. Thankfully it didn’t end up being too bad, the new car park made a great space to practice skating, and tormenting the poor live-in caretaker at the town hall became one of our new favourite pastimes. (Just so you’re aware “tormenting” amounted to us just being caught in his precious car park!)
Not long after this Gav and Jamie got new bikes for Christmas.
Two shiny red Raleigh Max hardtails with RST 281 suspension forks, 21 gears and V BRAKES!! These were about the coolest things my young eyes had ever laid eyes on and since my two older neighbours had just traded up to new bigger bikes their old bikes were going spare.
So thats how I got my first ‘real’ mountain bike, it was a dark red Raleigh Jackal (and in a rather wonderful case of serendipity one of my current bikes is a Santa Cruz Jackal) in a deep red with black graphics and forks. 1″ quill stem, cantilever brakes and 15 gears!! I was in love. A lifelong obsession had been born…
My uncle bought me a stack of 1990-93 MBUK magazines from a local charity shop and I’d spend every moment I wasn’t riding my bike reading about bikes. This gave me a wealth of retro knowledge from way before my time as I was reading about John Tomac decimating everybody in XC and Downhill years after the fact. I’d read all the current issues as well though, I’d spend hours poring over full page adverts for shops that were just lists of part names and their prices. Working out just how many months I’d need to save my pocket money to be able to afford that part I wanted.
And with that heavy 90s MBUK influence I decided that I was going to be a trials rider!
The Martins, as Martyn Ashton and Martin Hawes were known back then, were the coolest thing in mountain biking by far! A trip to Whitley Bay for the 1998 MBUK urban tour was an absolutely life changing experience for me. My mum and dad probably just remember standing in the rain for hours but for me it was my first taste of professional mountain biking, sans mountains of course!
At that urban tour I got one of my first proper upgrades for my little Raleigh Jackal, a set of pazzaz riser bars with a welded brace in bright orange to match the Wellgo DX copies I’d bought a few months earlier. Sure we had to bend the front of the single bolt quill stem up to get the bars to fit but my bike had never looked cooler, even if I did have to carry a spanner for when they inevitably slipped forward in the stem.
My dream of being a world famous trials rider persisted a few more months until another of my friends was entering a Downhill race and asked if I’d like to go along and have a go. I could even use her bike! A Coyote DH2 with White Bros UD160 forks and Hayes HYDRAULIC DISC BRAKES!!
Now if you know me you’ll know I say this a lot, but it was the best day ever. I decided all I wanted to do was ride bikes down hills dead fast and spent all my combined birthday and Christmas money on a full face helmet (a Qranc Quamaquaze, does anyone remember it?) at that race, and that was my trials era over.
I think I’m trying to make some kind of point here but I’ve started rambling about retro stuff now so you’re all just gonna have to deal with it, there’s definitely a point here somewhere… I think it was something to do with the internet…
Oh yeah! That’s it! Kids these days! And also kids’ bikes these days!
The death of 26″ wheels has been a bad thing for kids riding bikes. The UK dirt jump scene in mountain biking has pretty much died off from where it was when I was a young’un. Bikes which every kid I knew used to build themselves out of what they had available, when fitted with a singlespeed kit, short stem and high rise bars you suddenly had a dirt jump bike!
Nowadays the dirt jump scene skews more towards the more specialist options, which to a kid with limited funds are prohibitively expensive – and that’s if you can find one to begin with. If you go to get your kid a beginner mountain bike in 2021 the choice most shops seem to be giving kids is an XC bike, usually a 29er…
Now my Raleigh was sort of an XC bike in the beginning (more just a bike really) but thanks to its small frame size and compact wheels I was able to mould it to the style of riding I wanted to do on it. But the amount of kids I see these days on basic 29er hardtail XC bikes riding them like dirt jump bikes, bending wheels, forks, frames and none of it’s covered by warranty because it’s ‘not the way the bike is designed to be ridden’. I think some responsibility needs to fall on the people selling these kids bikes that aren’t suitable for purpose! Most of the kids over 10 that we sell bikes to want to take them off some ‘sweet jumps’, and surely they should be able to, no?
Well worry not! The revolution is here! There a dearth of small 26″ hardtail frames all over this big blue rock that are ripe for the type of dirt jump/hack bike conversions needed to relieve the pressure on the overburdened warranty departments of your favourite bike maker.
Behind closed doors in workshops the country wide, mechanics in short sleeved work shirts are getting incredible kicks, building parts that shouldn’t exist, for bikes they’ll never ride…
(Sorry I just watched Fear and Loathing again…)
So this week we have a 2 for 1 case study!
In two days at the shop we had two local shredders come in with 29ers in similar states of disrepair, rear wheels apparently released in a brand collaboration between Pringles and Taco Bell, gear cables slimier than a Shell Oil board meeting, chainrings that they could sell on as prop ninja stars for Steven Segal’s latest film…
Now both these kids said the golden words to me when iI asked how their bikes had ended up like this: Both kids had been out BUILDING THEIR OWN JUMPS!!
As soon as I heard that I knew it was time to intervene! If these kids have managed to avoid being computer/phone/app obsessed zombies long enough to put a shovel to dirt, we’ve gotta do whatever we can to keep that fire burning!
So anyway, finally, on to this week’s case studies!
Case study #1 – Andreu Lacondelad*
When this young lad wheeled his bike in it certainly was a sight to behold! If it could be bent, it was bent, if it could be worn, it was worn. But his bike was nice and clean and he clearly was trying his best to keep it running even if it wasn’t the right tool for the job. We serviced his bike up and got him going again and he was totally stoked. I wasn’t happy though, I didn’t want to have to end up doing the same job again in a couple of months on parts that are just getting weaker and weaker with each progressive bend and realignment. The cogs were turning and a plan was being made.
Thanks to the amazing generosity of the people of Calder Valley we get some absolutely amazing donations at the shop and in another case of that wonderful serendipity that seems to surround the mountain bike world the day after his visit we were donated this mega little GT Avalanche!
The forks were seized and the brakes were corroded beyond any redemption, it had a full 27 speed drivetrain but just looking at the angles of the frame had me reminiscing about the Brian Lopes signature frame I’d lusted after for so many years when I was younger. Not to mention it already had a set of Halo Twin Rail dirt jump tyres fitted. So at this point the only realistic option is a dirt jump conversion…
In between rides the previous owner stored these brakes in the sea…
The forks weren’t in a much better state, they were removed and added to the pile to be resurrected at a later date…
Gear cables and grips were also toast so at this point we made the decision that a full strip down was happening.
Luckily the headset and BB bearings were nice and smooth so that’s one less headache.
This will all go nicely on another build, except those brakes, they’ll go nicely in the scrap.
The traditional BB and cassette spacer singlespeed kit is the best way to get perfect chainline on a singlespeed set up and probably the second cheapest, I’ll show you the cheapest way later!
An old Deore mech with a severely bent cage can become a very neat, easily tunable singlespeed tensioner with only a little Dremel work and a tiny length of old cable.
The forks were a set that we’d resurrected earlier in the week, I can only assume that they’d also been stored in the sea somewhere but maybe removed every few months to be dragged through a muddy field with the top caps off…
A good bit of scrubbing with a variety of abrasives and you can have some good results!
The lowers undergo a similar level of deep clean and get PLENTY of fresh grease.
The rest of the build was finished with parts from our extensive second hand parts collection and it rides better than I could have hoped for.
Case Study #2: Nicholai Rogatkid*
So I was already stoked on that build when the next day we had a stressed out looking dad come in with a pair of wheels for his son, who had also been riding a hardtail XC 29er to a level far beyond what it was ever designed for. He’s also just like a mini version of me when I was his age, as soon as he saw my bike in the back of the shop his jaw dropped and he started reeling off the names of every bit of my bike!
Rogatkid knew he needed a different bike for the jumps he’d been building and had started a build on an old 26″ Specialized Rockhopper frame. He’d got himself a sweet set of wheels for it on eBay with DT Swiss 240 hubs on some 26″ Stans Flow rims unfortunately for him the rotor mounts were centrelock and the seller hadn’t sent the rotors.
Dad looked like he was getting to the end of his tether with the constantly spiralling cost of this build, luckily he’d brought it to the right place. We took the frame and wheels from them and Rogatkid went off to win his rugby league championship final while we went to town on his bike.
Again starting with the forks, a basic service on a budget fork like this is such an easy job to do, takes hardly any time at all if you have the right kit and makes such a difference to how the fork feels. It’s by no means perfect and you have to keep the stanchions well lubricated to prevent the recurrence of rust and corrosion, but for little shredders who can’t afford to be paying, what, £400+? for a dirt jump fork, it’s a great option.
Quite unbelievably there were still some flecks of the original blue grease in these lowers.
Use plenty of grease when reassembling, there’s no damper in there, it’s just a spring in a tube. It doesn’t even really need to be suspension grease with forks of this level, something a bit thicker will probably last longer. I’d still keep away from the super sticky stuff though, this one is from Pure and while I’m not a big fan of it anywhere else on the bike it works a treat for these cheap fork resurrections.
Reassembling a looseball headset is time for the real thick grease..
So the tensioner that I made for Lacondelad’s bike earlier looked pretty cool, I like this one even more though, and check that clearance between the jockey wheel and sprocket!
Remember when I said about the cheapest singlespeed spacer kit? This is it! I used an old pump shaft, but you can use plumbers’ plastic pipe, an old Fox 36 stanchion, whatever you want really that’s gonna fill that space. Remember measure twice and all that!
The chainline gods were certainly smiling down on my hacksaw blade this day…
Factory finishing touches for every bike makes every rider feel like a factory rider…
The finished article, ready to shred!
Just look at them! The most fun type of bike possible, I just need Calderdale Council to get a pump track going on that old speedway track along the road now… Or maybe we don’t! The money these kids saved on their builds I’ve made them promise to reinvest in spades, so we might just end up with some rad new dirt jump spots popping up all over!
Either way two stoked kids, two less PS5’s draining all sense of imagination and one happy mechanic who can’t wait to help you out with your kid’s (or your!) dirt jump conversion.
Super stoked kid #2 Nicholai Rogatkid, picking his bike up on a soaking Calderdale day, ready to go straight out to the jumps.
Super stoked kid #1 Andreu Lacondelad! This kid knows more about what’s on your bike than you do!
*Kids’ names have been changed to terrible puns by the Editor.
