I'm building up a pretty french Ficelle for my 12-year-old daughter, and she's accecpted the fact that she'll have to master friction downtube shifters after 6 years of indexed mountian bikes. But I baited her with her next bike-a Shogun 400 that'll be tricked out with Sora STI bifters. She needs to grow a few inches first, and the Ficelle is SMALL.
It's nice your boy shows an interest in wrenching. My daughter just asks for chrome bits.....
And keep the bike Deere green!
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(135 year old house, wood stove in the kitchen, '44 Jeep in the barn, and two manual tranny trucks in the dooryard!)