Sidecar fitting kit?

[Dogbad]

I have the XBR 500 and, as I might have mentioned, I used it a few days ago and enjoyed it.
I also have an MZ ETZ 250 with a single sidecar fitted. The MZ electric's are not working at the moment and it's too cold and dark to spend much time in the garage at the moment. What I did wonder is how I would go about taking the sidecar off the MZ and putting it on the XBR.  Do I need to know any particular details of the sidecar make and model etc or is it like an "Industry Standard" type of thing?  Anybody know what, where and how many "Earth Pounds" I would have to sort out to do this?

[guest18]

Have a look in the pictures section (sorry can't remember which bit!) and you should find some snaps of the job GC very kindly sorted out fitting an ex MZ chair (squire dart iirc) to my XBR500SJ.
That should give you a starter for ten 
Other than that I'm sure some of the experts will be along shortly to offer you better advice than I can, and possibly/hopefully even a pointer towards the direction of the pics
Otherwise I'll have a look myself next year 

A Guid New Year to one and all,
Smudge

[Steve H]

Pictures start HERE

[guest7]

The chief problem with Smudge's chair was that as an original MZ fitting it had a swan neck upper front mounting tube and (IIRC) the rear upper mount also had little adjustment. Luckily we were able to work around this, but it was luck that the lead* was ok with the front mount lined up with the downtube.

Put up some piccies of the chair and we can advise from there.

GC

* Lead = the distance that the sidecar wheel has to be ahead of the rear wheel of the bike. The two wheels are rarely in line with each other (Harley chairs are in line) and generally the chair wheel is at least 9" ahead of the rear wheel.

[guest18]

Thanks Gents. 

[Dogbad]

Thanks all. I'll have a nosey at the pic's.
One comment on the idea so far is that maybe the small chair, it looks the same as one I used on a Vespa 200 a few years ago, might be too lightweight for the grunt of the XBR.
Any thoughts on that?  Part of me thinks just get the MZ to work and leave the chair for that.  I think it's only an alternator failure or summat else that has electrickery in it's genes.

[johnr]

you can buy fittings for pretty much any chair and any bike from watsonian squire. but they are incredibly expensive. keep an eye on ebay, plenty of former charioteers tend to shift on boxes or buckets full or mixed sidecar fittings from time to time.

[guest18]

The power of the XBR is fine, you can run standard gearing and it doesn't affect fuel consumption (htough a tooth lower might help general nippiness!)
I'm very much a chariot novice but I always kept a bag of sand in the boot of the chair and still found it alarmingly easy to lift the chair wheel, bear in mind that I'm a novice however and at least t's better than eing stuck with too heavy a chair, ballast can always be removed if you want to shift heavy stuff 

[guest7]

Agreed, Smudge's chair was light and not all riders like the look of an 8" chair wheel.

My favourite chair for XBR use (based entirely on looks) is the Velorex with 16" wheel... which is what I am about to fit to my XBR. However, Smudge's rig did look cute too.

One of the founding club members Richard Moore built a lovely XBR/Velorex outfit:


GC