[TBoneAz]

So from my other thread I decided to go with the 24in bike for my oldest daughter who turns 7 in 2 weeks and is 51in tall with a 22in inseam.

Ive also convinced myself that she needs a rigid front fork and only 7 speeds. In my opinion a suspension fork and extra gears are unneeded bloat and complexity. She is a girl, after all, I want a bike she can handle, especially the front end.

So all I can find is the trek MT200 or the new Giant Revel.

The MT200 is steel and probably defeats my weight saving goals. Trek seems to spend alot of time matching everythign to the rider - I love the cranks with multiple pedal locations.

The Giant is Alum, seems fine, maybe not as much attention to detail? New model for 2013 replacing the Boulder Jr I spent the day scouring phoenix for (wanted a blowout 2012 deal!)

Any thoughts here?

 

[Foltz77]

I actually picked up a Trek MT220 for my daughter and she's having zero problems with it (She's 8 almost 9 though) its 3x7 but it works to get her a 'real girl' MTB instead of the wally-world little BMX type bike she had with one gear . Her only gripe is twist shifting

 

[fatchanceti]

I also picked up a 24" Revel this weekend. We went to 4 bike shops. Every other bike had a suspension fork (that I could barely compress - WTF is a 50 lb kid going to do with it?) and front derailleur. This is my daughter's first geared bike, so wanted to keep it simple. 1x7, rigid fork (not a POS suspension fork also happens to be rigid), etc. The Revel hit all of the right boxes. The fit was also good - some of the 24" bikes (especially a GT at Performance) were really stretched out and had fairly high standovers and saddle heights.

She can almost flatfoot the revel with the seat in the right place. The bike is not too stretched out (she is 52-53" tall), so she is fairly upright.

Website says 36h, but fairly certain it uses 32h hubs, rims

Nits:
They brag about the lightweight ALUXX frame, but then slap a boat anchor hi-ten fork on it
She claims the grip shifters are irritating her hand already (1 day)

The Specialized store had a Hotrock 24 that was the only other one I would have considered purchasing. It was also 1x7, had disc mounts on frame and fork, and also reasonable reach and standover. It was $100 more than the Revel, and she didn't like it as much, so that was easy.