Passed a motorcyclist on the hard shoulder today and it had a sidecar on the right hand side. First time I have seen a sidecar for years.
Made me wonder what it must be like sitting in the sidecar? Terrifying springs to mind, couple of feet off the road and no control of speed, direction etc!
Anyone had a ride in one?
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Not since I was a kid 60 years ago, in my dads Ariel Square Four and sidecar. Too young to care then and H&S hadn't been invented. As for no control, haven't you ever been a passenger in a car or aircraft?
Last edited by: Old Navy on Tue 7 Jun 11 at 19:46
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Double Watsonian.........as a sprog mind.
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A friend bought a BSA and sidecar, and on the ride home, thinking he was on his old bike, tried to bank it through a bend. Ouch. Many unhappy hours finding the thorns from the hedge. Only rode one very briefly: Mad George, a Canadian who had a stable of bikes at Uni. (acquired through larceny it later emerged) lent me his Triumph 650 plus sidecar. A pursuit for masochists only:)
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No. Never. Wallace and Grommitt stuff ! :-)
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Yes, many times - on my older brothers motorsickle, my sister would ride pillion and I'd be in the sidecar.
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Yeah, 4 of us would shoot off down the pub on it when we sneaked out of school. It was a 500 cc single norton I think, two on the bike and two in the chair.
In the end the owner ditched the chair and drove the bike with just the side car tube frame.
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No, never...but I had a Triumph Tiger Cub for which I later bought a small single seater chair.
Bolted it on outside the shop and off I went, having the chair up in the air on the first serious bend.
SWM2B was a regular passenger and preferred it to the pillion. I later traded it all in for a Bond 250cc twin, but, like extending the house upwards, that's another stor(e)y.
We managed to get one of our older bike club members on a camping trip to Bavaria in 2003. Fred was 77 and had a few bikes including a 650 Kawasaki retro with a single seat chair. It was very handy for excess camping gear but he wasn't too keen on it being on the wrong side for continental camber......and North Sea Ferries charged an extra £12 for it.
Next year we got him to the Ardennes but he left the sidecar at home this time.
Sadly no longer with us, we all loved him and were glad to have managed to get him abroad.
He even enjoyed the food, a change from his chips and tea diet.
Ted
Last edited by: Ted on Tue 7 Jun 11 at 23:01
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Brilliant Ted. Reminds me of a fellow camper on the Dragon Rally this year - Ex- forces he rode an Ural combo with aplomp !
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A couple of times, back in my hitchhiking days. Once in one of those bullet-shaped ones. You could feel the asymmetry of the arrangement under any sort of acceleration or braking.
Got a lift in France in a Dyna Panhard with my then girlfriend. The people who had stopped for us were a family of five. Somehow we all squeezed into the two big bench seats. A Dyna Panhard would hold six thin people in comfort. Always fancied one actually. Sort of a fast, classy 2CV.
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Bootiful...love French cars like that.
Here's the Russky.
www.ural.com/
Ted
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yeah, a proper tin bath job...i had to share it with a car battery too
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>> Bootiful...love French cars like that.
Thats really something ain it. Never seen one before
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>> en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Panhard_DynaZ_1959_front.jpg
Thank you PU. They are fine looking devices, aren't they? That's an early one I think. Detail changes to that body improved it somewhat over the years. For the last couple of years of production a completely different, modernized body with rear flying buttresses a la Jag XJS coupe was used, and there was a fast model that could do 110 or so.
The car had a magnificent 1000cc air-cooled flat twin in front of the front axle, gearbox behind it, just as in a 2CV, but with a conventional four-speed column gearshift. The body and bench seats were surprisingly roomy. The thing was reasonably quiet and economical and could cruise at 70 no problem. It had a beam back axle on trailing arms and was said to have dodgy handling on the limit when pushed, although one wonders whether large passenger loads and careless monitoring of tyre pressures might not have been the reason in many cases. The point really was that it wasn't a sporting vehicle but an eccentric French minimalist luxury family cruiser.
It was a bit expensive, and I guess that and the eccentricity were what killed it off.
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>> It was a bit expensive, and I guess that and the eccentricity were what killed it off.
And, thinking about it, safety legislation perhaps. A heavily loaded one after a bad French A road crash - and there must have been a few - would have been an unsettling sight. Although I like them myself (and I am not alone), lightweight cars with poor secondary safety are frowned on these days.
But the price must have counted too. As a middle-class car when the big manufacturers were still rather pre-war the Panhard could cut the mustard. But my guess is that those who could afford Panhards started to aspire to something with a bit more weight and more cylinders. French individuality had become eccentricity to too many Frenchmen. Something like that.
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if the side car was on the right hand side it must of been a foreign one then?
this in in reply to the op
Last edited by: zookeeper on Wed 8 Jun 11 at 01:24
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Yes, I rode in the chair of this one for 12 laps of Mallory Park
i100.photobucket.com/albums/m34/Veeeight/8352693b24b1e8224613f7e0d471374e.jpg
Dave Hallam was a colleague of mine and knew it was something I alweays wanted to do. It was a Weddnesday afternoon practice session and I had to get into his normal passengers leathers and get my crash helmet seen before any marshalls realised!
It was brilliant but the hairpin was hard work and scary:)
Pat
PS I was a thinner then and my bones worked:(
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>> PS I was a thinner then and my bones worked:(
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I know that feeling x 2 !!
p.s. What happened to Simoncelli Sunday!!!
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No, that wasn't me PU.
It was all very 'undercover' as Dave would have been banned from racing for taking an 'unlicenced' passenger round, even in practice.
I was told to remember to ALWAYS have one hand holding a grip, even when changing position from over the bike to out of the chair. I was also told that if I was scared I had to do it, because the bike would roll if I didn't, but once I was upright again to hit him on the back and he's go into the pits.
That didn't happen and we completed the 12 laps allowed:)........slower than he usually did though!
Simoncelli, Martin? Peer pressure, I think but he'll be back and I wish I could be at Silverstone on Sunday!
Pat
Last edited by: pda on Wed 8 Jun 11 at 08:44
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Is that you in the photo Pat ? I have the greatest if respect for racing side-car pilots (nothing passive about the person in the "chair") - I was watching the racing from the TT the other day, a pair were killed on the Island....
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We had someone at work who claimed to have been a motorcycle "World Champion"-looked him up and it was true-sidecar passenger in the days of Florian Camathias(and others).Had another "World Champion" on our site but that was in a sailing class.
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And here is what happens when you dont hold on *all* the time
www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2Am88MCcC0
My father did the passenger bit for a short while, his fireman owned an outfit, remember watcing him race at snetterton. He always wanted to be a speedway rider but it never quite worked out. Before my "coming" apparently.
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It was not unknown for passengers to be left behind on the startline.
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I remember on tv seeing Murray Walker being taken as passenger by George O'Dell - Murray started off with his usual commentary, but first corner approaching at a seemingly breakneck speed rendered even him speechless.
Murray went up in my estimation after seeing that!
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Once in the early eighties
The bike was a Cossack Ural - they had the controls on the opposite side to British bikes, and as the rider had a tin leg, they were the only thing he could ride. Unfortunately, this also meant the sidecar was on the wrong side, in the middle of the road - quite enlightening
We were on our way to a hotel in Abergavenny where the rider was to sing with a jazz band - The Usk Valley Stompers, IIRC, and he'd had half a bottle of Vodka before we left.
We got there alright, and I have no recollection of how the hell we got back
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I road in the Watsonian D/A chair of my great-uncle's Norton Dominator 99. Any bike ride was a thrill in those days.
My pal once bought a 1953 Triumph Speed Twin - the sprung hub one - with a box sidecar on it, with the idea of providing a sort of breakdown service for we local lads, using the chair to carry a range of spares and tools. Although among his other bikes at that time were a Vincent Rapide, a Velocette Venom and a Norton 650SS the first time he tried to ride the Triumph round a corner he ended up in the hedge. Eventually he got the hang of it and for a while tried to ride a racing 'kneeler' outfit on the road as well.
The breakdown service was useful too...
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I think it was L.J.K. Setright who described sidecarring as "the art of doing the impossible with the unrideable".
I piloted one only once, back in my army days; a 350 Jawa outfit which belonged to the husband of our NAAFI manager. He complained of lack of power, even by the feeble standards of a stick bike. I took it to the workshops and removed a sizeable amount of oily carbon from the exhausts (common with 2-strokes back in the day) then proceeded to ride it back; turned left at a junction whilst mind was in solo mode, and looked left to see the sidecar wheel in the air at 30 degrees and climbing. Dropped the throttle, thankfully no other traffic about, returned to normal; took it gingerly back and never rode one again.
Had more fun as a passenger; an eccentric friend had a Silk (Derby-built special based on a Scott) with a chair on it which on mid-winter trips to the local miners' welfare club would do a passable impression of the Skaters Waltz whilst our solo-riding mates did their take on Bambi.
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I had one of these
tinyurl.com/3mwdhv8
with a Watsonian double adult sidecar on it, £299 on the road from Claude Rye, somewhere south of the Thames. Moved house in it with a wife and baby and got rid of it when I passed my car driving test. Replaced it with a 3 speed 100E Anglia, the one where the windescreen wipers were air driven and stopped when you accelerated to overtake!
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Ahhhh, the big Panther.
A bang every second lamp post...
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Wife's Uncle had a big bike, "Goldwing" maybe ? Anyway it had a sidecar. Uncle and Aunt on the bike and their German Shepherd dog in the side car was the usual set up apparently.
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Ever been in a sidecar? - Old Navy
