[Closed] Kids custom builds

Here's my lads new build.....Ragley Blue Pig.

https://goo.gl/photos/F4gYT8Z2PEypfZkq7

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Was a 2009 xs Commencal Normal tank. Now 5lbs lighter. My wallet is many lbs lighter, but she's my little girl 🙂

What size is that commencal?
My boy is already getting to big for his commencal Ramones 16",
He will be 6 in December and looking to get him another bike but a 20".
Now that the pound is crap against the Euro, buying a commencal doesn't work out as cheap as it used to.
Tempted to get a frame and build him up something using parts from my Anthem where I can.

16" custom build for my eldest. CNC lugs, single sided swingarm, Hope rear brake with stealth routing. Designed and built from scratch 🙂
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@stevied I love that!

@stevied especially love the internal transmission 😉

@hanchurch shorter stem maybe needed?

Samuel has a Riprock 20 with SLX brakes, an ebay carbon bar, superstar stem, rapid fire shifters, SDG seatpost with ibeam saddle, currently using saint pedals but will be changing them soon and his tyres are tubeless.

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Lewis has a ripcord that's basically been totally converted from standard. Crest wheels, hutchenson toro tyres tubeless, 11sp XT, lev DX dropper, WTB volt saddle, RSP 35mm stem, Easton haven bars, ergon thin grips, SLX brakes icetech rotors, aest pedals (now), tuned SIDs RCT3 with 2.5W damping oil, CCDB IL shock, Thorn crank, Tange Seiki LN 7922 BB

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@poah nice work.

I built my lads these two Spesh Hotrock's.
Neither rides them anymore as they both have On-One Fatty's which the prefer.

[url= https://farm1.staticflickr.com/744/32401892652_932d5efdee_k.jp g" target="_blank">https://farm1.staticflickr.com/744/32401892652_932d5efdee_k.jp g"/> [/img][/url][url= https://flic.kr/p/RnfaPA ]Rowan's Hotrock[/url] by [url= https://www.flickr.com/photos/takisawa2/ ]pten2106[/url], on Flickr

[url= https://farm1.staticflickr.com/682/31742680723_aac472e2b8_k.jp g" target="_blank">https://farm1.staticflickr.com/682/31742680723_aac472e2b8_k.jp g"/> [/img][/url][url= https://flic.kr/p/QmZx5F ]Rowan's Hotrock[/url] by [url= https://www.flickr.com/photos/takisawa2/ ]pten2106[/url], on Flickr

Goldigger - sorry, just seen your reply.

It's an XS 26" wheel bike. The bike was bought unseen on eBay, turned out to be a dud apart from the frame. Lots of bling bits from generous folk off here.

jr_bandito #1 has a prototype Genesis Core frame (c/o JamesO) with RS Revs, DT wheels, Deore 1x9 transmision and brakes.
Its a wee bit big for him, but his old 24" wheeled Isla was too small. And he agrees that big wheels roll faster. And being 26" wheeled, it opens up a lot more options for alternative parts. Just fitted some hens-teeth 165mm XT cranks and Ritchey WCS flat bars to bring the sizing in a bit. Photos one day....

Trying images from phone
https://flic.kr/p/WgPWGU
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Standard rear shock works surprisingly well ... front is a SID waiting tuning... Thompson dropper, 30t NW with m780 brakes, shifters and rear mech carbon bars and hope am stem .. v12 pedals odyssey bmx race saddle.

Wheels shared with XC bike below
12-40 with 40 expander on the XT 11-36

https://flic.kr/p/XhKqQS
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The bike is about iut if it's natural environment in this photo ...
Again m780 except rear brake which is 685 because it was cheap... aest pedals and currently a 34 up front. Carbon bars and titanium seatpost with odyssey bmx race saddle.

Wheels are novatec d771/772 laced with CXRay spokes onto crest rims. We mostly get away with rocket rons but don't ride much in the way of sharp rocks

Well, obviously stevied wins this.

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24" Blast, I think the seatpost is the only bit left from the original frame (which was dripping in rust). There's a long post on here somewhere with the build but the highlights are Islabike wheels, Carboncycles fork, Suntour Jr crank, 32x11-32 9 speed drivechain, Deore hydro brakes. (wheels and drivechain swapped after the photo was taken).

There's a separate thread running for this one and it's still mid-fettling, but I like crazy kids bikes too, so I'll stick it here as well:

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This is a small Haibike carbon frame originally for 27.5" wheels, but fitted with bespoke 26" carbon wheels wrapped in Schwalbe Rocket Ron evos and an 80mm travel-reduced Fox Factory 32 fork. Gears are 11-speed M8000 XT (11-42), with a 30t chainring up front. The cranks are temporary, pending the new 155mm cranks turning up 🙂

The bike was intended to replace the boy's Creig 24 next year, but since it rolled out of the garage last week, I can't get him off it, so it looks like it's going to stay 🙂

My lads custom Blast. Only original parts are the frame and the headset.
Cracking little bike. Did cost me a fair few quid in the end though, but his sister will be getting it next year I reckon.

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And at Sherwood Pines the other week.

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Daughter's Cube Attention. 14" frame from Bike Discount and built with a mixture of new and old parts
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Still can't get photos working from mobile but the XC bike now has 145mm Deore HTIi cranks with part of the hollow cranks filled with aluminium exoxy mix then tapped .... the Norco has the 140mm Zee's from the photo of the cannondale

Both have hope headsets with the cannondale just a normal ZS 1 1/8 and the Norco with a hope EC at he bottom for the tapered SID

Still can't get photos working from mobile but the XC bike now has 145mm Deore HTIi cranks with part of the hollow cranks filled with aluminium exoxy mix then tapped .... the Norco has the 140mm Zee's from the photo of the cannondale

Also, speaking to Hope yesterday, you apparently can now buy their 150mm cranks as special order from the factory. Of course, the downside of this is that they're nearly £300 when you've factored in a BB and chain ring :-/

It's great that there now seems to be some mainstream (if you can call Hope mainstream!) crank options for building proper kids bikes.

I went retro for my 9yr old daughters bike; old Kona frame, SIDs, original Hope on 217s, xt vs, chris king hs, zee 1x10 with cyclox narrow wide and some cut down raceface cranks. Nice and light and rides great.

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In action:
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@kevhl, my oldest came out for a ride with me on the wife's old bike, a 1998 Kona Caldera, rock show Judy, full 8 speed Xt set up, nice retro ride.

I like that Cube antares.

My daughter's build from last year when she was 10.
I looked for a while to find a xs adult frame.
I got it off ebay in the end in good nic.
New short cranks, headset & seat.
I went for a 2nd hand rigid steel fork (sprayed of course) to keep the weight down.
Most of the rest I recycled off another bike I had and spares.
Running 1x9. Although I left the granny front gear on as could be dropped by hand if needed. (Not done this so far).

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I am happy with the build, pretty decent weight and runs well.
She loves it.
I will put some Reba suspension forks my brother offered at some point.

I will put some Reba suspension forks my brother offered at some point.

It's all very well to to point and laugh at heavy BSOs loaded with ineffective suspension, but it's worth remembering that it takes a fair amount of endurance to ride around a modern trail center on a completely rigid bike with narrow tyres!

daern that is a fair point. I agree.
I am old enough to remember upgrading my first decent mtb, 20 odd years ago with quite expensive at the time suspension forks.
It made all the difference.

Although fairly tall she is quite light and has been getting on ok at the moment.
I guess you can run the forks with low air pressure for a light person.

Yes, I can remember my first suspension forks (Pace RC35s) and being surprised how badly they worked in the cold when they elastomers froze up 🙂

In theory, you can tune the dampers so that they are more aligned to a small-person's riding - i.e. the fork should be responsive with a much lighter person bouncing on it - but you can also just run thinner lower leg fluid or, as we are at the moment, just running it with the damping set to minimum (i.e. "descend" in Fox parlance) and see how it goes.

Certainly the easiest adjustment is to reduce the air pressure. Usually start at the bottom end of the chart and work down from there - I think I'm running around 50psi in my son's forks and only around 80psi in the rear shock. On the plus side, however, any damper lockout you have is really effective for little people, so a quick lever flip will give you a far more rigid bike than an adult would experience. On Fox forks, setting the CTD to "climb" effectively makes both fork and shock immovable on my son's bike.

One other tweak to make is to adjust the fork travel, which gives a load more options when buying forks - i.e. you may be able to find longer travel XC forks and then wind them in to suit the bike. You just need to watch the geometry, which can result in a steeper head-tube angle and corresponding changes to the bike handling. We're currently experimenting in this department...

Time for some more proper homemade custom frames!

Months ago I promised Stevied that I'd get these uploaded. First try with postimage so apologies if this goes wrong.....

26er made for a friend's daughter. Lots of stress before last Christmas. Running the previously mentioned NX 155mm cranks.
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Love how the head badge came out. Hand cut stainless steel, silver soldered on, powder coat all over then clean the powder off the stainless. Another flower cut into the seat tube sleeve if you look closely.
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Skinny 12.7mm seatstays for little people.
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Happy "customer"
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Previous iteration of similar frame for my youngest. 3.5 years of hard use before he outgrew it - now mothballed as a family heirloom.
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Second STW special needs balance bike project in 20" and 26" wheel configurations. Last I heard was that the young owner had successfully transitioned onto a pedal fatbike 🙂 There is also an earlier version if you search deep in the forum......
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My daughters rides:
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see-saw @ comrie croft?

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mick_r, you win I think! How did you find the NX groupset for kids' bikes?

Do you do frame-building for a living, or were these a specific project for the kids? The quality of the frame build suggests that these might not have been your first... 😉

yes it is poah
Great place & for a bit of camping.

The groupset was bought by the owner's dad so not actually tried it myself - she loves the bike so guess NX works OK 🙂 Seemed pretty good value as a complete package and levers are fairly short reach. Biggest bargain is the ready made short crank and NW ring combo.

Framebuilding is just a hobby - average 1 or 2 a year as otherwise it gets a bit of a drudge. Powdercoat also does a good job of hiding lots of dubious workmanship.....

Stevie's is more technically interesting - mine are pretty conventional construction.

Thanks Mick - good info. Yes, the NX cranks on their own are excellent value and perfect for these sorts of bikes.

I have to admit that I skipped Stevie's post because the bikes is a bit small for my kids now, but I remember seeing the build thread and being in awe of the construction. If I attempted this, by the time I actually got the bloody thing built, the kids would have left home 🙂

Similar to @antares - Cube Attention 14" frame from Bike Discount and swapped most of the bits off his old bike

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I mentioned this on the other thread, but you can now get 155mm SRAM NX cranks (although everywhere is out of stock at the moment):

I stuck 145 on his XC bike even though it's still way too long as it leaves a lot of growth (I was also hoping not to hit the holllow core by adding another 5mm) but he'll be sticking with 140 in his FS for the life of the bike .. the 145's will doubtless transfer onto his next XC frame

Interestingly, the new Creig 26 Pro (which is where we would be, size-wise, if we were buying today) now has 152mm cranks on it. This was the primary reason I went for the NX 155mm cranks as I find Islabikes are pretty good at spec'ing the right kit. Apart from Gripshift, obvs 😉

I find Islabikes are pretty good at spec'ing the right kit. Apart from Gripshift, obvs

The gripshift seems to be a religion for Islanikes... it doesn't matter how many kids can't use it they will continue to ignore fact and stick with belief.

They have also managed a different approach to the BB and cranks by sourcing carbon/ti square taper they can get almost any length cranks and have control over the chainline