# 12 Hotrock adjustments



## trap121 (Mar 7, 2011)

I started my son off on a strider when he was 2 and with in 6 months bought him a hotrock and he took right too it. All the other 12 in bikes seemed like tanks compared to
the hotrock. He now 3 and I take him on trails with me. 

He does fairly well on it but I want to make it as easy for him to ride as possible. Has anyone "upgraded" their 12 in? What about pedals? The pedals are cheap and his feet easily slide off. Anybody swap them out? Any other ideas?


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## pentlandexile (Jan 4, 2013)

Don't want no hijack the thread, but I'd also be interested to hear about people's experiences with pedals. My kid's feet keep slipping off his cheap plastic ones and I'm thinking about putting on some BMX style platforms for him.


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## Demo9 (Nov 20, 2006)

I can get you pedals that look like this they fit 1/2" threads. Also look into these shoes, they are awesome!! Teva® Crank C | Performance Mountain Biking Shoes at Teva.com


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## trap121 (Mar 7, 2011)

Demo9 said:


> I can get you pedals that look like this they fit 1/2" threads. Also look into these shoes, they are awesome!! Teva® Crank C | Performance Mountain Biking Shoes at Teva.com


How much are the pedals? Where do I get them? You sure they will fit the HR 12?


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## Demo9 (Nov 20, 2006)

Trap121 go here, Sandy Bicycle Larry has the pedals in stock and could ship them to you. I think there under $20 and yes they will fit the 1/2" threads on the Hotrock. Next is to order some Teva shoes. The kids shoes have the same sticky rubber as the adult shoes. His feet will stick to the pedals like glue.


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## pentlandexile (Jan 4, 2013)

I have to confess I never even thought about tricking out the kids' bikes before I saw this forum. Now .... another expensive bike habit is all i need ... boy am I in trouble!


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## adamm3 (Mar 26, 2007)

I just finished building a non coaster brake rear wheel and will be putting vbrakes on the rear soon. My little girls has been riding her balance bike since 22months and just last pedaled her hotrock for a few hundred yards down the street last week. She has a 3 year old sister that already rides a full handbrake 16" bike (Spawn)...so there is inspiration to ride the 'pedal' bike asap.

If you are riding trails with hills of any sort, i think coaster brakes are dangerous for little kids. Their first instinct is to put their feet down..and with a coaster that means no brakes! Seen this happen to a friends 7 year old who was riding trails for the first time...scary.


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## trap121 (Mar 7, 2011)

adamm3 said:


> I just finished building a non coaster brake rear wheel and will be putting vbrakes on the rear soon. My little girls has been riding her balance bike since 22months and just last pedaled her hotrock for a few hundred yards down the street last week. She has a 3 year old sister that already rides a full handbrake 16" bike (Spawn)...so there is inspiration to ride the 'pedal' bike asap.
> 
> If you are riding trails with hills of any sort, i think coaster brakes are dangerous for little kids. Their first instinct is to put their feet down..and with a coaster that means no brakes! Seen this happen to a friends 7 year old who was riding trails for the first time...scary.


I agree, it scares the crap out of me when he puts his feet down. Instead of pushing back on the pedals he drops his feet to the ground and let's them drag to stop. How difficult/expensive is the conversion for v brakes? What would I need to get? I'm no bike mechanic but I'm sure I can figure it out with some help.


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## adamm3 (Mar 26, 2007)

well its not done yet and it will take a little welding...but here is what i have come up with.

I am using a nut welded to the frame and bought some brake studs off ebay that will thread into these nuts. Not beautiful, but functional. Biggest issue is that the hotrock is aluminum and finding an aluminum metric nut in M10 or M8 is impossible. So I bought a standard english nut, an english to metric insert that threads into the nut. The stud then threads into this. 

Demo9 did a disc brake conversion oh one of his 12" bikes. You need to buy a few adapters and machine the hub a little....maybe he will chime in


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## Birdman (Dec 31, 2003)

I have a Hotrock 12 and 16 at home. It looks like the rear seatstays have a crossbrace capable of mounting a BMX U-brake to.

Anyone else tried that?

JMJ


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## mtnbkaz (Feb 2, 2004)

I've seen some serious kid bike builds. But the only thing I did to the 12'er was adding the super thick tubes so I never had to worry about flats. Other than that I didn't touch it. My kid was growing so fast that we didn't have it long. We got 15 months out of the 16'er - also only added thick tubes and knobbier tires.

Now on the 20, I figure we'll have this one longer so before I already swapped out some parts with old spares from the garage and may add nicer parts as things wear out.


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## mtnbkaz (Feb 2, 2004)

adamm3 said:


> If you are riding trails with hills of any sort, i think coaster brakes are dangerous for little kids. Their first instinct is to put their feet down..and with a coaster that means no brakes! Seen this happen to a friends 7 year old who was riding trails for the first time...scary.


I completely disagree with this statement. Many little kids just don't have the hand strength for hand brakes and they quickly learn to modulate the coaster brakes on hills (while keeping a firm and safe grip on the bars). Sure, the transition from balance bike to coaster takes a bit of time but once they figure it out, their legs have enough strength to stop them. My kid recently moved to hand brakes and it is much less instinctive than the coasters. Of course as they keep maturing, the hand brakes are far superior, but I think the coasters are a lot safer until hand strength and hand brake instincts are developed.


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## adrenalindaddy (Jan 8, 2013)

I'm not keen on coaster brakes, if you're kids getting up out of the saddle and moving their weight around to compensate for changes in gradient its really easy for them to slam the brakes on by mistake. This kept happening to my eldest, he was much happier with just hand brakes. My younger one didn't have the same hand strength though but I had some disc brakes lying around and fitted these to his new bike (scott voltage Jnr 20), complete overkill of course but discs are great for kids because of the adjustments you can make and give them bags of confidence.


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## mtnbkaz (Feb 2, 2004)

I guess it depends on age also. This thread was talking about 12" bikes. My kid outgrew the 12'er at 2.5 years and was on to the 16'er. At 3 years old, hand strength was an issue but leg strength wasn't. If we're talking older kids, then I agree that coaster brakes are probably not the best option. 

Also, mine started on a balance bike so having the balance to recover after accidental braking was never a problem and never caused any crashes. Lack of intuition for hand brakes caused crashes for us.


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## adamm3 (Mar 26, 2007)

My experience with my 3 year old is that she could operate vbrakes without issue strength wise from day one. BMX ubrakes i can understand as the are much harder than vbrakes. Tectro makes a great mini vbrake lever


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## Birdman (Dec 31, 2003)

I just swapped the saddle & seatpost on my youngest daughter's Hotrock 12. I bought an OEM replacement saddle for my other daughter's Hotrock 16, then removed the covering off her old one and recovered it in black vinyl to match the Hotrock 12 color scheme.

The slightly larger saddle should be more comfortable, and I can adjust the angle now (plus I shaved a bit of weight off). Mounted to an Odyssey 22.2mm post - good to go.

I also did a bit of profile machining to the custom seatpost on the Hotrock 16 - 6061 T6 aluminum seamless post bonded to a Syncros Hardcore clamp.

JMJ


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## GrayJay (May 16, 2011)

adamm3 said:


> If you are riding trails with hills of any sort, i think coaster brakes are dangerous for little kids. Their first instinct is to put their feet down..and with a coaster that means no brakes! Seen this happen to a friends 7 year old who was riding trails for the first time...scary.


 This has been the experience for my 4-year old riding with coasters. When she most needs to be panic braking, she takes feet off the pedals and tries to plant them on the ground. Good intermediate fix might be to add a single front handbrake in addition to the rear coaster to transition them to using handbrake and give them some braking capability even with feet off the pedals. Another downside of coaster brakes is that they are very prone to locking-up and skidding. My daughter actually seems to delight in intentionally locking-up her rear coaster and laying down a long rubber skid streak. 
BMX sidepull brakes would probably be a much easier bolt-on addition to a frame lacking cantilever or disk braze-ons.


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## adamm3 (Mar 26, 2007)

Sidepull brakes are too hard to pull for little hands


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## indianadave (Apr 27, 2010)

Even on my daughters first bike (16" Princess bike) I added a rear hand brake. It was just a BMX U-brake, but she learned to use it instead of the coaster. Was an easy change when she got her 20" Hotrock.
As with others, their first instinct is to put their feet down when in trouble. Teach them to use the hand brake, and they can still stop.
The BMX brake wasn't great, but at the speeds she traveled at that age, it slowed and stopped her fine.


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## chrisjmcqueen (Oct 19, 2010)

I bought the 12 Hotwalk, but totally should have went for the hotrock and just took the pedals off for the first bit.


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## Gunbunny66 (May 28, 2004)

I've been improving my son's Hotrock as well. He started riding it a year ago at about 2 1/2, after coming off his balance bike. He hasn't outgrown it, so it got a remodel this Christmas. I got rid of the original chainwheel and cog (28tx18t), and replaced it with a NICE 22t bmx chainwheel and 13t cog. It required some "engineering" but now hes got much better ground clearance. I also stripped all the paint off and upgraded him to an Intense. I'm encountering the same issue with pedals though. He's riding pretty hard, and loosing the pedals has caused most of his crashes.


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## adamm3 (Mar 26, 2007)

Gunbunny
Can u send me a link to those cranks? I would like to put 22t on my 2.5 year olds hotrock. What 'engineering' did u have to do.


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## Gunbunny66 (May 28, 2004)

adamm3:
Let me preface by saying this was/is a 2012 Hotrock 12", I don't know if the stuff I had to do will be needed on other sizes or model years. now...

They're actually the stock cranks. The sprocket required the engineering. If you've taken apart the Hotrock, you may have noticed a proprietary crank/chainwheel interface. Namely that the hole in the chainwheel is a hexagon that slips over a matching portion of the crank. Also, the Hotrock has a 1/2" shorter crank arm than I could find anywhere. So I was left to modify the sprocket to fit onto the crank. Which meant a crap-ton of hand filing a round hole into a hexagon. It would be better if you could have a machine shop do it, because it is nigh impossible to not file the thing off center, but I was on a short time and cash budget. The sprocket cost me about $15 on Dan's Comp, it won't let me post a link to it. The cog was just a basic 13t coaster brake cog from Sunrace. Keep in mind the altered gear ratios when messing with the driveline. 3 year old kids don't put out much torque.


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