Almost Made it to the Road

Happy New Year!

I spent much of Saturday getting the sidecar frame attached to the motorcycle subframe. Thank you to Dom for looking at the picture and giving me a little confidence as to what I was doing. This is a shot of the rear mount with the names of the parts. There are quite a few parts and the trick was to get everything level with the motorcycle at ride height. I measured the distance from the rear subframe mount to the floor while sitting on the bike to get a rough starting point. Then after putting the bike on the center stand, I measured the distance again. The difference is the amount I raised the sidecar wheel above the floor with wooden blocks. After a lot of dinking around with the pieces, I finally pushed the 70 degree clamp as far as it will go into the new rear crossmember to get the sidecar as close to the bike as possible. Then with the sidecar frame on jackstands, leveled the sidecar frame side to side, threaded the heim joint all the way into the 70 degree boss and adjusted the boss so that the heim joint is parallel to the ground. I then did the same with the front mount ensuring the sidecar frame is close to level front to back. Actually, I tilted it up a couple of degrees to account for the forks compressing. The rear strut was installed just to keep the bike from falling over when it was moved off of the center stand.

At this point the body was placed back on the sidecar frame and the bike pushed off the center stand. At this point, the sidecar was pretty close to level in both axis so my procedure seemed to work. A line was marked on the floor and the center of the bike tires were wheeled onto it. The sidecar book known as the "Yellow Book" by David Hough describes a procedure to set toe in using a straight edge set against the front and rear tire. This procedure won't work on my bike unless I made a spacer as the rear tire is wider than the front. I then placed a 2x4 against the sidecar wheel and measured the distance from the 2x4 and the line on the floor in front and behind the motorcycle. I adjusted the front sidecar mount to get the toe-in close to what I wanted then used the threaded front heim joint to get it exactly to 5/8" in. Once toe in was set, I bolted the body back onto the frame. I mentioned in an earlier post that I would be replacing the cracked rubber body mounts. This turned out to be challenging as they are pretty stiff rubber rings. I finally came up with a method using a turnbuckle and a chain to stretch the rings on one side so I could bolt up the other side. I then set the lean out of the motorcycle by adjusting the rear strut with the front one removed and putting an magnetic angle gauge on the rear disc. It is initially set to 2° lean out with me sitting on the bike. Finally tightened up all of the bolts and looked for the Ibuprofen. Too much bending and lifting for me.

This morning seemed like a good day to take it out to see if it all works. This was taken while the engine was warming up but I didn't get much farther. The temperature has warmed up to 31°F and the driveway was pretty slippery. I made it within a couple of feet of the road but the driveway gets a little steeper at the very end. It felt weird to be backing down the driveway on a motorcycle. The rear tire (Shinko street tire) didn't have very good traction and would slide if you braked. The front (Heidenau K60) had pretty good traction and did a good job controlling speed and direction even while backing up. For this initial test, I used a car battery in the trunk and half a bag of this stuff used to clean up oil spills in the garage. quite a bit of weight.

I still don't have the wiring done and now plan on borrowing a trailer to take the rig to a parking lot to see how it handles and learn how to turn. Especially turning right. With the ballast in the car, I can hang all my weight on the handlebars and the left peg completely off the bike and not be able to pick up the sidecar wheel. Even if I throw myself trying to pull it up, I can get it to bounce up maybe an inch off of the ground. I think that this may be a good starting place though I want to put the battery into something to prevent acid from getting on the paint. I was pleasantly surprised to see that I could still mount the right case to the bike and still be able to almost open it fully.

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