Wide, yes! Teardrops, no!

As with anything, too each his own. Please enjoy your day!

My son is 9, this is his bike. It is a 24" tire with a stock fork. It has no disc tabs and the wheels aren't disc either. Not exactly sure what you have against V-brakes, but they work incredibly well. If it had tabs and I had a functional set of wheels I may have made it disc since I have a set of BB5's and rotors laying around. For that matter the brakes on it seem to grip better than the BB5's did anyway. But like I said the brakes work great! The bars were bought used as well as the brakes. I got a great deal on everything! The bars and the stem really lightened up the front plus he said his numb fingers haven't been back since. I think that right there is worth the price! The PD seat post itself is just cool with the I-beam mount and he loves the SDG Camo seat. So was it a waste of $ for brakes and bars, I'm gonna have to say NO! I could only wish to have had a MTB this cool when I was his age.

Is their something wrong with Avid brakes?

It is weird, I had that happen to me one time with a FMF carbon fork for my sons race bike. I banged and banged until it finally went down. Then I noticed I had hairline cracked the race. Had to remove and sand the inside of a different race to have it fit properly. It sucked!

Why is the race not seated? Very nice bikes though!