# Anyone skip the coaster brake phase?



## NS-NV (Aug 15, 2006)

My daughter is ready to ditch the run bike and take over her brother's Pitboss. There is only a handbrake on that bike. 

Has anyone had their little ripper gone straight to a hand brake and skipped the coaster?

Thoughts?


----------



## Demo9 (Nov 20, 2006)

My son was riding a custom 12" Specialized Hotrock with a rear disc at 2 1/2. I taught him right away not to skid. That seemed to be the biggest hurdle. He now rides a 16" bike with front and rear disc brakes. So I say go for it. The pitboss is super light, so the riding experience will be so much better.


----------



## NYrr496 (Sep 10, 2008)

My wife bought my son a coaster brake bike without talking to me first. When I put him on his handbrake bike after only riding the coaster brake bike for a relatively short time, he had a little trouble. Come to think of it, he was crashing the coaster brake bike in the beginning, so handbrakes might be easier.


----------



## HighFlyingMama (Apr 4, 2011)

Demo9 said:


> My son was riding a custom 12" Specialized Hotrock with a rear disc at 2 1/2. I taught him right away not to skid. That seemed to be the biggest hurdle. He now rides a 16" bike with front and rear disc brakes. So I say go for it. The pitboss is super light, so the riding experience will be so much better.


Can you tell me more about this? I'm fascinated. I just bought my 25 month old daughter a new-from-the-shop 2007 model Hotrock 12" as her first pedal bike. (She also has a Hotwalk and a LikeABike Forest.)

Her 6 year old brother started on the LikeABike at 2 and moved to a 16" Hotwalk at 3.5. Now, he's on a 20" 7 spd GT Stomper mountain bike and a Redline Pro Junior BMX racer.

But, she's advancing faster than he did and is a monster on the balance bikes. However, she doesn't get the coaster brake function. She can manhandle the Hotrock 12" with her feet, but when she uses the pedals, she keeps reverting to the brake function. If she could freewheel, she'd switch to pedals in no time, I'm sure. So, I'd love to switch her over to a rear-only disc and ditch the coaster brake.

But, I'm :madman: I have no idea where to start. The bike shop guys look at me like I have two heads when I suggest any mods for a newly 2 year old. LOL

But, there's no stopping her....unless you're a coaster brake.

HELP!


----------



## indianadave (Apr 27, 2010)

I'm adding a hand brake to the rear of my daughters 16" coaster brake bike. It already had a front hand brake. I'm going to encourage her to use the hand brakes as much as possible.
Their first instinctwhen going too fast or panicking is to put their feet down. Feet down means useless coaster brake!
I stole the rear brake off a junk bike, and just need to pick up a short length of brake cable.


----------



## AntagonistHero (Mar 18, 2010)

When bought my boys their first bike I completely disabled the coaster brake and taught them to use the handbrake. I didn't want to teach them bad habits that would need to be corrected.

Fair warning... Plan on them ruining a pair of tennis shoes if you go this route. On second thought... My neighbors kids ruined their shoes even though they had coaster brakes. YMMV


----------



## Demo9 (Nov 20, 2006)

@HighFlyingMama, here is the link to the 12" bike. http://forums.mtbr.com/showthread.php?t=480584 I later added the disc. Here is a link to the Pitboss, http://forums.mtbr.com/showthread.php?t=640923, in the pitboss link is the info for the disc parts. With the 12" bike you just need a rear 32 hole flipflop bmx hub and the disc parts.
Hope this helps


----------



## perttime (Aug 26, 2005)

A coaster brake has one pretty serious drawback: you have to have the cranks in a certain position to brake. Hand brakes are always there even if your feet fall off of the pedals. They just need to be set up so that they can be operated with small hands.

It is just the grandmothers who never used anything but coaster brakes that think there's something particularly difficult about hand brakes.


----------

