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I am in the process of building a 26” bike for my 10yr old, I have been generously donated a frame (14inch Orange Five), I’m now looking to build it up in time for his Birthday in June - I know that it has an 1”1/8 steerer straight, and my initial idea was to build it up by separate components, however I’m now thinking it may be a better idea to get a full 26inch bike and strip the parts off it, this way I may be able to save a fair bit of money and transfer the parts over and upgrade as and when we need to. What would be a good bike to purchase as a donor, any suggestions? (Keeping price pretty low if I can, not bothered about geometry too much - I just thought it would be cool if he rode a bike similar to mine 🙂
Look for used. Long Trac hard tail- Something like a Cove Stiffee or Cotic Soul.
Nice idea but there's a high chance The cranks will be too long, the drive train will be shot, the grips will be worn out and the tires will be perished so you'll be buying lots of parts anyway.
Unfortunately I bleed more money than sense into bike builds so I might well have the wrong opinion.
Decent, light forks are your biggest issue. I've saved some older 26" Pikes (heavy) and newer 26" Pikes (bit lighter) for my boy as he grows. He's 9 at the moment and on a 24" Carerra with SID's at 80mm (light).
I'm hoping to extend the SID's to 100mm as he grows to a XS 26" frame then use one of the others on his next bike. I imagine the older Pikes won't get used but the ability to change them from 110mm to 140mm is an attractive idea.
So far he's not showing any signs of being the next Steve Peat so who knows but this enforced downtime is giving me time to work on his basic skills and i'm scratching a simple trail in behind the house and building woodwork out of skip finds..
Always upgrade your bike, drop your stuff down to the kids.
I’ve got a build waiting for when I finally stop going in to work.
I have the unfortunate habit of also saving my old bikes for when the kids grow.
Sadly they grew. All the bikes are too small now and have had hardly any use except for the ‘tip’ bikes which they go to the park on.
As above, forks will be the issue. Almost all forks from the last however many years have tapered steerer tubes. I'd say ideally you want 140mm travel, which would mean old Pikes or maybe Fox 32? If going for Fox, avoid the Talas series.
I imagine there must be a load of 26" Hope/Stans wheels kicking about for cheap.
Finishing kit you'd be better off buying separate as well, then you can get the right size bars/stem etc.
New groupset from somewhere like Merlin could be the most economical option.
I’ve a full Sram 1 x 11 groupset, raceface 50mm stem, spesh bars, Ergon grips, orange nuke proof pedals, charge spoon that I could do you a good deal on? Also got a 30.9 reverb and 31.6 brand x ascend but both stealth
I've got a 2011 Spesh Stumpjumper Elite FSR (in fantastic condition) that I'm not sure what to do with as I have just bought a new bike (bloody bad timing I know). I was going to hang on to it but tbh I'm not sure I need this extra bike taking up space. The only thing I think would not be transferable would be the rear shock as its the Spesh Brain variety.