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Sadly, that is where the good part ends.

The bike is a continual bag of frustration. I have a lot of cool tools and am relatively handy, but no matter how hard I tried I could not tighten hardware on this bike so that it would STAY tight. And, adjusting so the brakes would work was near impossible. And small parts were so cheaply made that 1 of them actually broke during building. After a week of use, so many parts of the bike were loose and flaky I took to a bike shop, where for $40 they tightened and tuned it up. And, the bike shop experts themselves told me this bike was “junk” and that it would never be satisfying.

Think it’s fixed now? Nope. Within a few weeks the chain started coming off after less than an hour of use. I adjusted and tightened and put back out. Chain comes off again.

There is simply no way to tighten this so the chain doesn’t come off again, and each time I try I am down for a 90-minute project that needs 2 adults.

So now, we have a bike that is only 4 months old that sits in the garage.

Lesson learned: you get what you pay for, and be wary of a $69 bike.

Total junk, and one very unhappy little girl.

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I went through the manual probably 10 times looking for the brake assembly and finally found it not actually in the manual, but on a separate loose page.

The brake assembly was extremely difficult and following the directions was extremely useless. I finally had to go online for help and discovered that you actually need to loosen the cable from the wheel to get enough slack to have any hope of getting it to reach the handbrake itself. Once I figured this out, there was a lot of work involved getting it to the right tension so that the brake would grip easily, but not drag on the tires.

Really frustrating assembly experience, but my daughter does love the bike.

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The parts that were not assembled were not the most simple of items (handle brake, seat, tires, etc.). The instructions were terrible. When it came to the seat, something I figured would not be too difficult, I had to guess as to which parts to use as the instructions were not clear. Being a pretty handy guy, I was getting frustrated as I can be a tad OCD when it comes to making sure things are assembled correctly. My Father-in-law came over and he could not make heads or tails of the instructions either. Now that both of us were stumped was exceptionally rare.

Having parts left over, I kept them as I was sure I would figure out where they went to. They went to nothing structural as I would not let my kids play on an unsafe toy, but the instructions gave no indication as to where they went. I finally did find when they went as I noticed the grip on the hand break had an spot for a tightening screw and nut.

Over all, the bike is very solid and my daughter loves it. It wasn’t too hard to assemble, but clearer instructions would have made it a snap. I do wish they had invested in better packaging so that the amount of scratches and the risk of parts falling out of the box in shipping would be reduced.