It didn't take long to realize that we needed handguards for the 16. Our four year old was riding just outside of the homerun fence at a baseball field, and all I could think about was his hand hitting one of the fence posts. I found the Moose "mini" aluminum guards for $35 shipped, that are made for 1 1/8" fatbars. As expected, they took a lot of persuading to get them to mount up: A fair bit of bending in a vise w/ a big adjustable wrench, I had to add some electrical tape to the bar-end inserts, cutting off about 3" from each guard and drilling a new hole for the bar-clamp mount, and adding a segment of old inner tube to the bar clamps so they will resist sliding from the fat part of the bar to the thin part.

I couldn't stand the clang-clang of the chain against the chain guard, so I dremmeled out the horizontal surface of the guard where the loosest part of the chain flaps around. I know that I could run the chain tighter since the CS sprocket moves with the swingarm, but I just can't bring myself to have a tight chain. The guard still prevents a finger or foot from getting pulled between the chain and sprocket, but a shoelace might find a way in.

Finally, since the Owen only weighs 42 pounds, we got a 400lb shock spring from Oset. While swapping springs, we found that the swingarm bolts were overtorqued and had a lot of friction. With the new spring and re-torqued swingarm bolts, he now uses the full range of travel, and we will probably switch back to the stock spring fairly soon.

Pete

Edited June 17, 201016 yr by flypigs

When i did a few enduro races, quite a few people warned me off those type of handguards as there had been a few broken arms caused by hands slipping off the grips & going through the gap in a crash.

Sounds nasty, just something to bear in mind.

Edited June 18, 201016 yr by t-shock 250

Having read your post earlier today, I've just been out to the garage and found that my swinging arm was also far too tight. I removed the lower shock bolt and the arm stayed in exactly the same position, I'm sure my daughter could have ridden the bike in a trial without the shock fitted.

I've slackend the bolts off and refitted the shock and it works correctly now. She's only ridden the bike twice but I'm amazed that I didn't spot the absence of rear suspension.

Top tip, thankyou

Pete