Actually, my advice for the first short trip within the USA (600 miles or less) is to go with the Voyageur, no matter when it was made, and no matter who made it! I only advise against making some classic bicycle of the past your expedition touring bike. You already own it! After you have made a short trip with it, you'll have a much better idea of what you want.
I haven't done the Silk Road, Capetown to Cairo, or the Austral Highway yet, and perhaps I never will. But I have been to places where for political or economic reasons, it is impossible to find some particular size of tire, spoke, rim, or whatever. For example, I have been behind the Iron Curtain searching for replacement spokes to rebuild a wheel with. (I took a bus back to Vienna.)
My advice against making the 20-30 year old bike as your expedition bike is, that no matter what you know about the bike, there is what you don't know about it. The industrial standards that bicycles use (for example, how the bottom brackets are threaded, or how the headset mounts) change very gradually over time. If you are traveling thousands of miles from home, wouldn't you like to have something that uses very standard modern parts, parts that can be replaced anywhere, with tools that any bike shop owns?
Originally Posted by
118 black
I think my info and some recent persons post here said they were made by Panasonic or another careful japanese frame maker. And yes Panasonic made made some great bikes and still do. See the yellow jersey site in Madison Wisconsin. Too much money for my pocket, the new ones that is. Just missed a oppurtunity to buy a DX 4000 complete for 100.00
Now I am so amazed that you mention the Yellow Jersey in Madison, Wisconsin, here, because that is where all of my first bicycles came from. I grew up in Madison. While the Yellow Jersey has been selling great bicycles for about 40 years, some of the earlier models they sold would not be bikes that you would want to take on an expedition today, although they might make great urban cruisers or conversions. For example, I can remember as a teenager at the Yellow Jersey, learning about such forgotten technologies as cottered cranks.
On my first overseas trip, in 1983, I discovered during the trip that there was an almost arbitrary line across Europe between English/German standards (27 inch wheels, English threading of screws) and French/Italian standards (700C wheels, everything metric). A lot of the utility bikes seemed to be English/German, even where the racing bikes were French/Italian. And the English made some very good touring bikes with 27 inch wheels, like Raleigh and Dawes. Of course, the Japanese made great copies of both, selling them into the respective markets. So the Yellow Jersey late 1970s Sekai that I took over form my father when he stopped riding it has 27 inch wheels. I would say the frame is a bit too sport, but I have actually done some short tours on it, with rear panniers only. However, it would be completely inappropriate for an expedition.
My main consideration in choosing a good expedition touring bike is to get one for which you can buy new parts (the basics, not a new bottom bracket or headset) whereever you are going. I sure appreciate how much easier it is to work with modern headsets. Would you really want to mess with the headset on an early 1980s Voyageur in some out-of-the-way place?
Howard