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I want to get one of my kids a bicycle for his forthcoming birthday, and I know he quite likes my CX - a bike I use for winter road riding, general off-road/trail riding (when I do it), and commuting.
He was asking me the other day if it would be possible to put knobbly tyres on a used road bike, and then added 'bike' to his birthday list (specifying 'discs'!)
Now, Mrs SR and I have no idea how much we can spend, but I don't imagine a good deal more than a couple of hundred. Nonetheless, I am wondering if anyone has a small road bike lying around that I might be able to work up into a road/off-road machine. Maybe something with cable discs, but I don't think it will matter if I can fit, say, some 28 mm knobbly tyres on it.
He's a growing kid, and can currently get himself around on a 52-ish cm frame.
Can you actually get 28mm knobbly tyres? 31mm is skinny even by CX standards, 33mm is the norm.
I am pretty sure an old CX of mine (that got stolen) had 28s.
We picked up mrs_oab's Liv Invite CX bike for £225 - discs and all.
This was pre-Covid pricing mind.
IMO you would likely be better hunting down a CX bike - more likely to have discs and clearance for a bigger tyre.
Sorry, we've none spare...
Find your local facebook group for cyclocross - ours in wessex has a constant stream of 700c "kids" bikes and smaller adult ones as kids grow out of them
My lad has a small women's pinnacle dolomite road bike (it's just black sea he doesn't care that it's a ladies frame), again not for sale unfortunately, but he's been running 32mm CX comps through winter. He's also got full mudguards, but I did have to mod those quite a bit, clearance is still decent though.
I've got a Boardman sport/e youth frame that runs 700c wheel & I also have a set of Fulcrum CX5 wheels. The frame is rolling stock as it was my sons and I took off the original Shimano groupset that was on and upgraded it to Tiagra which I've now removed to switch to another bike. It still has the brakes and cranks but would need shifters & rear mech - its not disk though.
This isn't the actual bike but its one of these
https://cyclingshop.org.uk/boardman-sport-e-junior-road-bike-700-c-for-kids-age-9-16/