My 3 year old has been riding his Strider since 14 months (started just "walking" with it...). As his skills improved, he's now able to rip around town and on some mellow machine built singletrack out behind our house.
I swapped out the foam/plastic tire/wheel combo to some alloys with pneumatics (adds a fair bit of weight over the foam jobbers which work amazingly well, but don't have a brake track). I tiny bit better traction on dirt trails, and now that he's heavier/stronger, he can boss the tires around a bit.
And we just welded on some V brake studs under the stays. Gotta find a crazy tiny brake lever, but I think that should be easy enough. The Avid is temporary until then. Very smooth/short cable run, and very light action springs mean a hand brake he can really utilize. And the brake is 100% out of his way. Simple addition, really.
He's a little dude for his age, so the Strider is still the only one he can ride! We've tried Burley, Specialized, Raleigh and some others, and he still can't ride any of them as well as he was gliding this one from Strider many months ago already! Tiny grips, tiny seat, ultra light and very low standover makes a great push bike. Brakes and better rubber just up the ante now that he's gliding more aggressively.
I swapped out the foam/plastic tire/wheel combo to some alloys with pneumatics (adds a fair bit of weight over the foam jobbers which work amazingly well, but don't have a brake track). I tiny bit better traction on dirt trails, and now that he's heavier/stronger, he can boss the tires around a bit.
And we just welded on some V brake studs under the stays. Gotta find a crazy tiny brake lever, but I think that should be easy enough. The Avid is temporary until then. Very smooth/short cable run, and very light action springs mean a hand brake he can really utilize. And the brake is 100% out of his way. Simple addition, really.
He's a little dude for his age, so the Strider is still the only one he can ride! We've tried Burley, Specialized, Raleigh and some others, and he still can't ride any of them as well as he was gliding this one from Strider many months ago already! Tiny grips, tiny seat, ultra light and very low standover makes a great push bike. Brakes and better rubber just up the ante now that he's gliding more aggressively.