Pedal Bike for nearly 3 year old?

[Spanna]

My son will be 3 years old soon and I've been wanting to get him a proper pedal bike, no fixed wheel non-sense, since he got his balance on his, well, balance bike. He's been picking his feet up and letting his momentum carry him for over 2 months now and I've just worked out how far he travelled on it when we went for a ride to the park today. 3 miles. That's 1.3 miles there, the same route back plus riding around loads whilst there.

He is really attached to his bike, absolutely adores it so I wanted to get him a good quality bike that he could take to pedalling on quite quickly.

I've been to Halfords, Toys R Us and JJB this afternoon, but their bikes seem to weigh as much my own bike, a (mid-nineties) Trek.

What did/do your children ride at this age?

I found this on eBay:

http://pages.ebay.com/link/?nav=item.view&id=2...

Looks pretty good, is a good size and weight

I looked at the Islabike Cnoc 14, but it's just too tall for now I think.

[Deerfoot]

My daughter has just turned three and rides a CNOC14 easily. She is 97cm tall.

[Spanna]

Deerfoot said:

My daughter has just turned three and rides a CNOC14 easily. She is 97cm tall.

That's interesting as my lad was about 93cm tall when I tried to measure him earlier, not that he would stand still long enough for me to measure accurately.

It seems I might be best waiting until Christmas to get him one of these, but I can't help thinking something shorter in the mean time might be worthwhile.

[badgerade]

My 4 year old is 1M (he's short for his age!) and get's on with the CNOC14. They definitely need something lightweight at this age - anything heavy is too hard to balance and move around easily.

[Justin S]

Have a look at Islabikes for kiddies bikes

[Omaruk]

+1 Isla Cnoc 14,

fantastic bikes, geared right for little legs, cranks, handlebars, brakes and controls all suited to little people

My 3 year old on hers

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmXvMPlA37s&fea...

[Silver940]

My boy is 3 this month and flies around on his Early Rider Lite - literally, jumps it the lot. Tried him on a pedal bike and although he can balance ok the pedalling is confusing at the moment. It's where having something fixed for a little while helps as they have to pedal when you are helping them. That said riding a fixed pedal bike without stabilsers is tricky too!

My daugther who has just turned 4 took to riding the pedal bike all of a sudden and is confident now. She is small for her age.

I'd say be wary of spending too much, the speed my older kids have gone through bike sizes is amazing, the 14/16" ones look hardly ridden!

My 9 year old has her seat at the max on her 24" MTB already and has only had it 9 months!

[Omaruk]

agree my daughter had the early rider 1st. Balance bikes are great as she went straight from that to the Isla Cnoc and pedalling in 15 mins - no stabilisers required

I would actually say spend well, if the bike is decent they will ride it if it's heavy unstable and no fun to ride it will gather dust. Also the resale value on decent kids bikes is very high so cost of ownership is actually less than tat bikes from the supermarkets.

[Deerfoot]

Omaruk said:

Also the resale value on decent kids bikes is very high so cost of ownership is actually less than tat bikes from the supermarkets.

Absolutely. We bought an Islabike Rothan balance bike new for £90, used it for two kids and sold it three years later on the bay for £60.

[Spanna]

^^ The price of the Rothan has gone up quite a bit then, it's £129.99 on their website now. Did you buy it from somewhere else or is their website the only place?

Thanks for the suggestions and experiences. Looking at second hand ones on eBay the CNOC14 there's bids of over £100 on ones that are 3 years old. Islabike definitely seems the way to go.

[Deerfoot]

I bought it new in 2009 from Islabike directly. I can't recommend Islabike enough.

[Amateurish]

My little girl is currently enjoying her Specialised Hotrock 12. She loves it and is very confident in it. She zooms all over the place at high speed.

If your lad is a bit small for the CNOC 14, this might be worth a look.

She's now getting a bit big for the Spesh, so I've bought her a CNOC 16 to replace it with.

[zebedee]

Cnoc 14, but he was only tall enough for it at 4. No rush though as he was loving his Rothan balance bike already. Keep yours on the balance bike for now if enjoying it, last thing you want is bad experience whilst learning to pedal and a few months until size is right will fly by and I can't see you regretting it. He learned to pedal a pedal tractor in the meantime so he was straight off and pedalling without me having to hold him at all.

[Gizmoish]

Don't know the model, but I saw three separate small boys on Islabikes in the forest yesterday - so I assume they're pretty good!