Outlander 23
Check out the 2nd
edition of Outlander 23...
Click on any of the images, to see a
larger version.
Outlander 23 was designed with three main things in mind, one
was that the bike be able to fit it's intended rider, two, to be able to do loaded
touring, third was that the bike be a SWB/USS bike. Designing SWB bikes for those who are
vertically-challenged is a bit of a challenge since the front wheel has to fit under the
rider and at the same time allow the rider to get a leg down.
The bike frame borrowed from my previous low racer designs by
'cranking' the frame at the head tube. The design is very smilar to a Vision R40 frame
except that the front boom angles down to lower the BB height. Keeping in mind that
Shelley was a novice rider, the two things that novices find easy to adapt to were a seat
back with a fairly upright angle (60 to 70 degrees), and a BB that was lower than the
seat.
To achieve this, the chain had to change direction as both
runs of the chain had to go up and over the front wheel. This again borrowed from my
lowracer designs. I set the seat quite a bit forward so that it was possible to fit the
two pairs of panniers behind the seat. But also this helped increase the heel clearance
with the front wheel. The handlebars are the same as Outlander 20, which was copied from
the Vision SWB bikes.
The one thing that was new on this bike was brazing mounts
for the water bottles on the side of the seat frame. This was done since there really
wasn't anywhere else to put them, the one under the seat is mainly for a waterbottle
battery for lights or for carrying 1.5 litre bottled water. The frame is made entirely of
chro-moly including the seat frame (the lightest one yet), the rear triangle came from a
Trek 930 MTB, the fork was an oversized MTB fork, and the front boom.
The bike is different from the original drawing as I made
running changes, to improve the riding position.
