Scary BSOs

Hindsight's a terrible thing.

When I was a kid (and still at the age when you just had the bike your folks bought for you) I had an Emmelle Cougar MTB. Ten non-indexed gears, steel box rims and whitewall tyres, proper 90s fluoro yellow/orange paintjob. Weighed approximately a million tons. But I was happy enough with it, it didn't break or anything. My abiding memory of it though, was taking it on a sort of cross country sportive week up on Exmoor, organised by my school.

Now, I'm not claiming that I was particularly fit at the time (not much has changed). But I'd been riding a lot, on and off road, the bike was the right size for me, etc... and from the very first afternoon I was at the back of the group trying desperately not to get dropped. I spent the first three days trying to keep up with everyone - anyone - else. Couldn't work it out, and I was hating the whole enterprise. Finally on the fourth day I swapped bikes with a friend who had a Trek something... and I was flying. The Trek was so much lighter it was comical, the first gate we came to, I almost threw it over by accident.

Moral of the story - life's too short for crap bikes.

I fixed up my mate's Halfords Special version of the same; the bottom bracket lockring was hanging around the crank, and the reason the gears didn't work very well was that the front shifter was wired to the rear derailleur and vice versa. (And I thought it was going to be a quick jobbie of tweaking cables!)

Quite frankly, just dangerous. Well, better now at least. Funnily enough, she hasn't quite got to the state of regular cyclist yet.

There is a knack to these BSO's, you need to know when to stop adjusting them, as you will never get a repeatable result from gears or brakes.

You had it easy, just wait till you get one that someone else has had a go at first, including truing the wheel (I.e making them worse) with pliers, they usually have the forks / stem the wrong way round as well, as that's how they come out the box.

These things are a waste of metal as a bicycle, their best use is to strip them completely and get the kids to treat them as a giant meccanno set building it up.

Merry Christmas.

That's not a bike ...BSO still doesn't come close...scaffolder's trestle possibly....http://www.sportsdirect.com/dunlop-ds26-mountain-bike-26-inch-932296
15kg my eye...!!!

i had a halfords special to deal with a few years ago that you've just
described perfectly
and as for the children's sized kona t that weighed more than the child did !!!!!!!

I guess it's a 1st bike so he'll have no idea on the quality aspect but if he enjoys it it'll lead to better bikes which you can advise.
Did you have any idea about the quality of your 1st bike.......probably just trying to balance and get rid of the stabilizers.
It's your job now to keep him interested and to get him to nag his parents into splashing out large sums for his next bikes.