Veemax
Race Dog
There are a good many lady riders or short guys who are excluded from riding dualsport bikes because , well , dualsport bikes are tall.
The light ones are normally around 250 cc , are STILL too tall , and really battle on open roads to keep 120kph, and have limited range, so anyone trying this route simply can't hang with the manne. At around 350cc and up you just get enough voomah to do 120 , but then the tanks are tiny and/or plastic , the bikes are tall, and there aren't many 350cc and 400cc bikes around that have the attributes of even half of what Adventure riding calls for .... a reasonable seat, luggage rack, metal tank ( magnetic ...get it ? ) ... with 350km+ range. full suspension , 21" hoop up front , etc etc.
Enter my Missus , at 48 kg , with 710 mm legs , for whom a DR650SE is a giant bike. Proportionally , a 48kg person should be riding a 113kg bike , to make the same sense as an 85kg guy on a 200kg bike. Imagine ...you troll the data and even 800mm seat heights cannot be found on anything but a cruiser ....but your heart is a Wild Dog heart !!!
Anyway , I am retired, and have TIME , so I set about trying to turn the odds on this predicament. This is the result. It's a very rare Honda XLX350R , with a top speed of 136kph , makes a little over 30 bee aitch pee , weighs a tad over 130kg , has a 14 litre metal tank , and a luggage rack , and a fairly robust pedigree engine if not overheated sand plugging. I really wanted a DR350 but hey... naddah...
So I set about a major exercise to try to shave > 10 cm of the seat height , without , in any way, compromising the suspension.
The result is BrokeBackBike !!!
Started out like this :-
Got chooped to hell like this :-
Presented it to the missus to try out ...
Some kickstarting practice was needed ...
And finally , one tiny , happy wife hits the road today looking nicely nestled IN the bike , like THIS !!!
So there you have it , full suspension , lightweight , enough grunt to overtake cars doing 120 , nearly 400km range .... lets go !
What, you may ask, was compromised .... ???
Ok, so to free up the space inside the subframe , the airbox had to go , the frame tubes had to be moved , the battery and wiring relocated, the sidecovers chopped , many long hours of gnawing away at the bike to find solutions .....
It runs a very non ideal pod air filter now ....but I will work around that in time ....get an oil wetted foam element in there with some imagination and plumbing.
The bike now has an unloaded seat height of a mere 800 mm , with the wife + 10kg luggage on board, the suspension sags exactly one-third , and the seat is now at 750mm. The wifes legs reach 710mm and the last 40mm is made up with angled feet and boots ....
The whole exercise took 6 weeks , one R98 pod filter, and a few welding rods.
Tenacity: Persistant determination !!
The light ones are normally around 250 cc , are STILL too tall , and really battle on open roads to keep 120kph, and have limited range, so anyone trying this route simply can't hang with the manne. At around 350cc and up you just get enough voomah to do 120 , but then the tanks are tiny and/or plastic , the bikes are tall, and there aren't many 350cc and 400cc bikes around that have the attributes of even half of what Adventure riding calls for .... a reasonable seat, luggage rack, metal tank ( magnetic ...get it ? ) ... with 350km+ range. full suspension , 21" hoop up front , etc etc.
Enter my Missus , at 48 kg , with 710 mm legs , for whom a DR650SE is a giant bike. Proportionally , a 48kg person should be riding a 113kg bike , to make the same sense as an 85kg guy on a 200kg bike. Imagine ...you troll the data and even 800mm seat heights cannot be found on anything but a cruiser ....but your heart is a Wild Dog heart !!!
Anyway , I am retired, and have TIME , so I set about trying to turn the odds on this predicament. This is the result. It's a very rare Honda XLX350R , with a top speed of 136kph , makes a little over 30 bee aitch pee , weighs a tad over 130kg , has a 14 litre metal tank , and a luggage rack , and a fairly robust pedigree engine if not overheated sand plugging. I really wanted a DR350 but hey... naddah...
So I set about a major exercise to try to shave > 10 cm of the seat height , without , in any way, compromising the suspension.
The result is BrokeBackBike !!!
Started out like this :-
Got chooped to hell like this :-
Presented it to the missus to try out ...
Some kickstarting practice was needed ...
And finally , one tiny , happy wife hits the road today looking nicely nestled IN the bike , like THIS !!!
So there you have it , full suspension , lightweight , enough grunt to overtake cars doing 120 , nearly 400km range .... lets go !
What, you may ask, was compromised .... ???
Ok, so to free up the space inside the subframe , the airbox had to go , the frame tubes had to be moved , the battery and wiring relocated, the sidecovers chopped , many long hours of gnawing away at the bike to find solutions .....
It runs a very non ideal pod air filter now ....but I will work around that in time ....get an oil wetted foam element in there with some imagination and plumbing.
The bike now has an unloaded seat height of a mere 800 mm , with the wife + 10kg luggage on board, the suspension sags exactly one-third , and the seat is now at 750mm. The wifes legs reach 710mm and the last 40mm is made up with angled feet and boots ....
The whole exercise took 6 weeks , one R98 pod filter, and a few welding rods.
Tenacity: Persistant determination !!
