Roberts Dogs Bolx (kids version) interesting history

Yetichaser

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I thought i’d start a build thread after recently acquiring this bike.
I wasn’t really looking just yet for the next bike for my youngest son but this one seemed a perfect size for him as he slowly outgrows his Fat Chance.

It was advertised as a Dogs Bolx although confusingly had a White Spider sticker on it which added to the intrigue and I couldn’t get it out of my mind.

I picked it up from @MatBH5 (lovely to meet you and show me your wonderful collection of Roberts bikes) on Friday evening And retuned home in the early hours of Saturday morning.

Today I have given it a clean following the road trip and cleaned off the grime it accumulated whilst on the roof rack.

My son was keen to see it and fortunately it looks like a great fit.
The components look to be in good condition with little wear, a few scratches on the frame and a small ding but given its 30years old seems good to me.

I emailed Geoff Roberts and he confirmed that it was indeed a Dogs Bolx built by himself for one of his sons in 1994. His son thought it wasn’t appropriate to have the Dogs Bolx name when taking it to school so a White Spider sticker was used instead.

The rear of the frame has the DB horseshoe seat stays with the sleeved stays and ovalised chainststays (this is consistent with my own DB), altough the front end feels more like my White Spider as it doesnt appear to have the ovalised downtube that changes shape at each end.

So now my thoughts are on how to build this.
The bike will be used by my son for recreational use and entering cyclocross and mountain bike races.

In order to be semi competitive it needs suspension forks and stronger brakes whilst remaining light (currently weighs 22lb) and, unfortunately from a period correct view, modern kids cranks so as to not risk knee injury.
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My thinking is Pace RC35s and Maguras and then run a 1x7 speed like I did for my eldest son.

Wheels are yet to be decided; the current Ritchey Vantage looking to be very lightly used…although my son has an obsession with black Porcupines and has his eye on my Purple Ringle hubs from my Yeti.

The rest of the components will need to be decided over the coming weeks and months and so this will be a drawn out process given other work and life commitments, but will try and update periodically.

Below are some initial pictures, plus some of a Saracen I picked up which came with some early Magura Hydrostop (?)brakes. The rest of the Saracen will be up for sale soon.
 
Quick update

I’d stripped the bike down a couple of months ago and, unfortunately, came across the following horror on the seattube where the front mech had been clamped.

So I took it to Winston for a repair and took the opportunity to get a colour change to match (not exactly) mine.

I took the opportunity to get hydraulic cable guides brazed on (maybe not pretty but better than having to use cable ties like I did with my other son’s Klein



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Its been a while and there was a push to get this done in time for my sons 10th birthday in July…but I missed it as hadn’t sourced all the parts.

Like my eldest son’s Klein, I went with Campagnolo shifters and rear mech and used HUP kids specific cranks so as to not bugger up his knees.

I managed to source a very short Salsa stem and used a set of black Hyperlites to finish off the steering.
A purple Chris King headset was used along with a serviced set of Pace RC 35 forks which I think work pretty well given their age.

The bling came from the wheels; purple Ringle hubs with matching Ringle skewers with Mavic SUP 117 rims.

A flite ti saddle on a nos Controltech sestpost finish off the seating area.

The real pigs ear was the brakes. The original Maguras were ditched and replaced with slightly newer HS11s.

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