16" bike for Tunakid #1 build thread

I have a friend at work. Good guy. He wonders why, and is annoyed at his kids because they don't appreciate anything. He wonders why the brand new bike sits unused. Why they don't appreciate the Wii he bought them. Etc.

This guy actually bought a winner Pinewood Derby car for his kid to win for Scouts.

I am not like this.

Not at all.

Tunakid #1 turns five in a few months. This is not a birthday present, but he is outgrowing his 12" bike we bought new for Christmas when he turned three. It's time. It's time to learn some lessons, and some mechanical skill. He currently owns a ratchet, a 1/2" socket, an allen wrench, and a hammer. He may own more by the time it's all over with.

I went over to church-friend-Jim and he gave me this.

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An older Fisher Price 16" bike. It seems like it's rough. The paint is a mess. The bearings are all loose. The chain is rusty. It's PERFECT. It was FREE.

Plan is to spend 1/2 at a time disassembling, learning, reassembling. The final bit will be painting it (coincidentally I need a paint gun for the GMC in my build thread) and making up some RescueBots stickers. Since it was free, he can pick out new pedals, new grips, stuff like that, and do it with birthday money, and have a bike he can be proud of, and one that he'll take care of.

Updates will be slow. Working on the bike will be behavior and time based. He wakes up at 6 and rarely naps, so his bedtime is roughly 8-9 and I am not doing this one when he's not around.

Wish us luck!

that's awesome. In for updates.. Ohh wait there's no subscribe button.

I learned truly invaluable lessons doing this as a kid. My brother and I did it but dad was no influence in our case. We had a retired neighborhood gentleman that taught us how to change out cranks and goosenecks etc.. Mr. Bernia also sold us parts and helped teach us about how things go together.

Great idea, love it!

Great idea. My boys (10 and 12) have learned how to take apart and repurpose many of their old scooters and bikes. I am amazed by some of the things I find when I come home from work.

Chris

Bikes were my first intro to wrenching. Dad was involved, only in a non-involved way: He kept the tools locked up so that they did not disappear. My brother and I had to learn how to pick a lock and then create an undetectable and removable access panel from the back of the tool cabinet.

Dad was forever wondering how his tools kept disappearing.

My bike growing up was a rescue from the dump. I painted it and futzed around with it constantly. I loved that bike.

Good guy dad.

Bikes was how I got started. I got more free bikes out of dumpsters and such that I would wrench on and ride around on for awhile. They always seemed to work better than the new ones. My parents were not mechanically inclined, however, so I had to learn by reading, doing, and usually, screwing up.

I remember the first bike I ever painted. It was my mom's old Schwinn that she had as a young girl. I remember taking it all apart, sanding it, riding my other bike down to the Ames to buy a couple of cans of Rustoleum Red (back before they ID'd you for buying paint. Before kids were into huffing it.) and hanging the bike from a tree on a rope to paint it with the wheels off. Literally rode the wheels off that bike.

Great build thread!

tpwalsh wrote: that's awesome. In for updates.. Ohh wait there's no subscribe button.

Yeah there is, there's the little heart at the bottom that puts the thread on your watchlist, then you'll get emails whenever someone posts in it.

With so much hand-me-down potential this will be the bike that keeps on giving!

This is awesome. That's how most of us got started. As a kid, we used to scrounge broken bikes and parts to build bikes for a specific purpose. This was before you could buy a BMX bike. We built our own and then fixed what we broke. Good on you for getting him involved.

dculberson wrote: My bike growing up was a rescue from the dump. I painted it and futzed around with it constantly. I loved that bike. Good guy dad.

Yeah I've gotten better luck with trash picked bikes compared to purchased brand new ones for some reason.

Well, Tunawife went for a mother/daughter tea at church today. Tunakids 3 and #2 behaved and went to take their naps without fussing. I was able to get dinner ready, clean the house, do the laundry, and get Tunakid #1 out in the garage when she came home.

It went fast, folks.

We were adjusting the seat so he could go for a ride.

Here he is, working on the rear wheel. He needed a bit of help breaking them loose, and he had to borrow a socket, but it was his ratchet and he did the real work. I got to show him how it's mounted in a slot, which really impressed him.

Success!

Now get this. I walked away for a bit, telling him to start on the front wheel. I walked back and he was almost done. I covertly stood on the handlebars so they wouldn't come off the ground as he cranked on it, and my four year old son removed the front wheel by himself.

It started raining, so I stopped taking pictures, but he learned how most stuff worked, took apart nearly everything with only minor help, and the best part happened when he took of the (thank God) right hand threaded pedal. The threads were moffed. Ugly. I showed him, showed him what a thread was, what it was supposed to look like, etc. I don't own any taps, but neighbor-Jim does. He went over with me to neighbor-Jim's machine shop and got to watch a real machinist at work. Here's where we are right now.

Next up is taking apart the wheels/tires and greasing the bearings and truing the spokes. I am worried. He's ready to frickin paint this thing in about a week and I have to wire my 220V to my compressor, get a HVLP gun, some pipe, and some paint along with some custom stickers. He's ahead of me. I was a proud papa.

We also embarked on a project for Tunakid #2. I walked around Hobby Lobby with $20 and he wanted a screw/snap together motorcycle (a Ninja) and he did a great job for a three year old. He loves it.

Tunakid #3 (not quite two) got a birdhouse to paint. We'll do that sometime during the week.

I love this!

I was just about to start my own kid-bike restoration thread. We just bought my daughter her second bike, which has 20" wheels and is still just a little big for her. She wants to take the training wheels off but isn't quite ready. We've already donated her "old" 12 inch bike.

I still have my first 16" bike that I got when I was five. She spotted it hanging in the basement and started asking about it, but it needs a full restoration. I ordered a new seat a few days ago and we're going to work on it as a team.

I worked on some stickers today. He wants it to be a rescuebot, and no rescuebot stickers exist, so Dad is arranging for a local sign shop to make some based on some pictures. Maybe I am going too far. I have a plan which he and I have discussed. You guys will see it in time. I am working on that, a spray gun, compressor power, and an air line, so that when it comes time, Daddy isn't the gate.

This is the best build thread on this site. I love it.

ProDarwin wrote: This is the best build thread on this site. I love it.

Thanks!! High praise around here.

I am trying to let the kid have some fun. Hopefully I am not spoiling him by trying to make it fun and rewarding.

I just hope his expectations for this sort of thing aren't raised to the point that, in 10 years, he'll expect to have his first car restored in 2 weeks.

volvoclearinghouse wrote: I just hope his expectations for this sort of thing aren't raised to the point that, in 10 years, he'll expect to have his first car restored in 2 weeks.

I won't let him watch "Overhaulin'" until he's done with a project that size, so he can be as angry as I am when people ask me why the truck doesn't take just a week to finish.

What do you mean you don't have dozens of extremely talented folks in an amazingly equipped gigantic garage working on it 24 hours a day for free?

Make sure you keep the garage locked. Tunakid #1 may take upon himself to finish the truck for you when you are not looking. I have to since my 4 and 2 year old will take a hammer to either of my Volvo 1800 projects.

There'd better be at least one Grassroots Motorsports sticker on that bike!

Sky_Render wrote: There'd better be at least one *Grassroots Motorsports* sticker on that bike!

ooo - didn't think of that honestly. I'll get it on there.

Is there a "Grassroots Bicycling"?

Sent ya a pm

Great project!

Did the same with my son, have to get them started early. We needed a day project to occupy him while his big sister had a big birthday party at grandma's house. We took two bikes that people had given us and tore them down to get all the best parts.

I showed him how to sandblast the frame, put him on a bar stool in front of the blast cabinet and let him do a little. Then I blew his mind and dipped the forks in stripper.

After it was bare metal I had him pick out a color from my left over powder coat collection. Candy Blue was the winner for the frame and we did the spinning stuff in silver.

That was a couple years ago. He picked up his new 16" bike with my wife at a garage sale for $5. He had that same look that I get when I bring home a new project. We will be pulling it down in the next couple weeks. Right now he is having too much fun with his Power wheels Corvette that we converted to 18V.

I hope in the next year or so, I can start sharing this stuff with my kid. I suspect we're gonna be building a LOT of things. I'm still on the hunt for a proper old school BMX frame for him.

Hey, jgrewe, you got me thinking. I was going to use the same HVLP setup I am going to buy anyway to paint the frame yellow - should I powdercoat instead?

Thanks for the kind words, guys.