OK, I am in the market for a child stoker kit and would like somebody who has been down this road to enlighten me.

1. Is there anything I need to look out for as far as fit goes other than tube diameter and bolt circle on my cranks?
2. Do all the child stoker kits have multiple pedals holes so the effective length on the cranks is adjustable?
3. What would the proper length be for a 6 year old who is about 4ft tall?
4. Does anyone know where to buy one and not have to spend 260.00? I have seen them on ebay and craigslist dirt cheap before I needed one, but they are nowhere to be found when I am ready to buy. At 260.00 we are approaching the "I can make one myself" range.
5. Do you pull it off when your full grown stoker rides or just remove the pedals?

Thanks,

Craig

Not sure I can help much... I bought a "Tsunami" child stoker kit from the now-defunct chucksbikes.com. The chucksbikes kit is an aluminum block threaded for a BB that clamps onto the seat tube. A standard square-taper cartridge bottom bracket is installed in the block. Cranks are standard 140mm BMX cranks, mounted backwards. This results in the pedals being threaded "wrong". So I swapped out the spindles (L to R) in my pedals and used loctite on the threads. NO problems.

I don't usually carry grown-ups, but if I do, I'll take off the kid stoker (four allen bolts)... I also put a quick-link in the chain to speed up the change.

My cranks, as I mentioned, are 140mm BMX cranks. They are too long for kids under 4 years of age, in my experience. Probably for a 4' kid, 140mm would be fine. You can look at the cranks on typical kids' bikes for comparison.

Setting up the handlebars can be trickier than buying the kid stoker setup. I use Wald 8069 hi-rise chopper bars in a standard stem; they seem to work fine.

I do not know where to get cheap kid stoker sets. You can ask on the Tandem@Hobbes mailing list.

If you are in S. California, give me a call(626 794 6789). I might have a used one for sale. It was on my '84 triplet, 125 mm cranks. My son and daughter both used it. By the time my son was 6 or 8, I think he was mostly switched to riding a Tandem Tuesday with crank shorteners. He is 17 now and uses 175 mm cranks. You do take the child conversion off when they are big enough. They are easy enough to take off, that converting it back and forth is not too hard, if you want to ride with another adult.

I have child stoker kits setup on my triplet and tandem. Both are Santana-branded, made out of blocks of aluminum with nylon spacers. I first had a model (Burley, maybe?) that was made of steel and did not have the nylon shim. I like the models that use the nylon insert better, as it seems to distribute the stress better and also is less likely to scratch the frame.

On a triplet it's a bit of a pain to set up, but it's pretty easy on a tandem.

To answer your questions:

1. Is there anything I need to look out for as far as fit goes other than tube diameter and bolt circle on my cranks?
> Tube diameter is key, of course. See my thoughts on using a nylon spacer with the BB adapter. BCD on your cranks isn't important. You can use a 110mm BCD stokid crank with a 130mm main drive crank, for example. The important thing is to match chainring sizes between the stokid crank and the drive crank so things don't get out of whack. (Of course, you'll need a chainring with the correct BCD for your main drive crank.)
2. Do all the child stoker kits have multiple pedals holes so the effective length on the cranks is adjustable?
> No. Most are set at ~125mm. DaVanci does make and sell a nice set of modified cranks that have two sets of holes at around 125 and 140mm.
3. What would the proper length be for a 6 year old who is about 4ft tall?
> My 6 year old son who is about that height does fine with the 125mm crnaks
4. Does anyone know where to buy one and not have to spend 260.00? I have seen them on ebay and craigslist dirt cheap before I needed one, but they are nowhere to be found when I am ready to buy. At 260.00 we are approaching the "I can make one myself" range.
> Just saw one on Ebay today. I found both of mine used through the Forum or the Tandem@Hobbes list (can't recall) and from a biking friend. Even used they hold their value pretty well. I paid $125 for one set and $165 for the other (had more components with it). Good news is, if you buy used you won't lose much value when you resell.
5. Do you pull it off when your full grown stoker rides or just remove the pedals?
> I've tried 1) just removing the pedals, and 2) pulling the cranks. Adult stoker still found the BB intrusive when riding. I really don't want to have to remove the BB and chain each time an adult rides, though. I haven't had to worry about it yet this season.

As Phantoj mentioned, the handlebars can be tricky, too. I used a cheap, standard 25.4mm seatpost (cut off the head), which is inserted into my stock stoker stem "receptacle" (bottom half) using a 25.4-29.8 shim to make up the difference. Then, a cheap 1" threadless stem clamps onto the seatpost-turned-stem (the 25.4mm seatpost "mast" is equal to 1"). A small, narrow handlebar is then used. Going this route was pretty cheap, as I had a set of handlebars that worked, and I bought the seatpost to cut down ($14), the shim, and the stem ($15) from my LBS.

E-mail me if you want to see some pics.

OK, I can't private message anyone since I don't have the required post to do so. I would however be interested in talking price with anybody that had one to fit a cannondale. Anybody who may be interested in selling one please send emails to cpatfm@hotmail.com.

Thanks,
Craig