[earthresin]

All,

I am catching up on all the posts here and like so many, am trying to figure out the available options for my 9 year old to bump up from his 24" Yama Jama. For reference he's 55" tall and 70lbs. Living in the southwest we definitely want a full squish and do need to be able to pedal it, but he's already used to grinding out loose climbs on Minions at this point. I can confidently say he is consistently outrunning the current bike on every ride.

The Reaper 26 has recently caught me eye but is hard to find. Has anyone considered swapping 26 wheels and shorter cranks onto a Reaper 27.5? I am comparing geo between the two and while reach is greater, it's still shorter than the YT Primus 26. The rear of the 26 and 27.5 Reaper are only 7mm different so I don't view that as a huge difference. I will say the seat tube length is about 25mm longer so that might be the limiting factor.

I definitely welcome any thoughts and appreciate the information/lessons learned from all here! I thought finding a 24" hardtail was hard.........that was way easier than this transition haha.

 

[svinyard]

The reaper isn't a bad bike. Drivetrain is nice and brakes might be decent too. I worry about the fork tho, and thats such a critical piece. The YT seemingly comes with the custom tuned JUnit Machete (OEM option as I understand it) which is a big upgrade.

I've gone the RM route with a 2020 Altitude frame for my son who is like 59". If we go 26" wheels, I'll set the ride9 to the steep position and go with 155mm cranks. You could easily do the same with the Reaper and then you could bump up the wheel size (or with ride9 mullet the thing a la Semenuk's Rampage bike) and have a nice setup.