So I was thinking about sidecars for a year or two when I had a weekend without plans last March (that's rare) and a garage full of suplies. At the end of the weekend I had a functional leaner on my Suzuki streetfighter. I've driven around 3000km last summer, just to see if I like sidecar riding enough to build a serious one on one of my BMW K bikes. I will try to keep this thread up-to-date with the progress I'm making. I started with a some piping on the ground just as a plan next to the Suzuki (in Dutch the bike is called Snavelfiets which means something like Beakbike). The swing arm and wheel I got from a Citroen I took apart some years ago. The damper comes from a Suzuki Savage. I fixed and sold one of those 10 years earlieer and somehow this spring remained in my garage. After 5 minutes thinking I went to the local hardware store and bought me some 40x40x3 square tubing. New simplified lay out: Fender in place: Subframe on Suzuki: Creating an arch for a new damper attachment location: And all build together: Mounted an old fish-transport-crate to it and first test drive: And a very short movie to prove it's functional:
After driving around for a month I was getting used to it so much that I wasn't paying attention enough and I hit a ships boulder with the sidecar frame when driving on a harberside. Whoops.
With help of a hydraulic jack and a butane flame everything was back in shape in under 30 minutes. I got a steel Polish Junak tub lying around for over 6 years that I plan to use. The passenger is a Hybrid II 6year old Crash Dummy I got from my former job.
Right turns could be real hard to do so I relocated the swing arm: This proved to be a real improvement, I suddenly could drive around at normal speeds without tankslappers. Mounted a lamp too:
Time to fix the Junak tub: Made a screen from scrap I had lying around: Just placed it on the frame to see what it looks like:
Creating a chair from foam I found somewhere in the back of my attic: Manly work behind the Singer machine:
Now I'm preparing a black BMW K100RS so I can mount a new frame (round tubing) to it and drive my 2 daughters around. It is all supposed to look something like this: And this is the bike I'm preparing. I've just replaced the engine since the original engine had a strange rattle I didn't trust.
And he hasn't even shown his car. C'mon Hellracer, put a pic and some info on, bet it's pretty much unknown abroad
You mean my East German "Volkswagen" ? A Trabant 601s. A twostroke two cilinder car with just 24hp made of Duroplast (resin re-enforced fabric fibres). I've got it for 20 years. It's enjoying a quite life of just 1500km per year now since we've got 2 full size Volvo's to fulfill our daily transportation needs.
