Author Topic: Sidecar rebuild  (Read 1530 times)

guest7

  • Guest
Sidecar rebuild
« on: November 09, 2008, 08:38:44 PM »
I thought some of you might be interested in the rebuild of a coach-built sidecar that my brother and I have undertaken with a view to him taking the chair to the Tauerntreffen in January.

We started with a shoddy second hand chair. Gareth stripped this down until all that remained was a pile of aluminium panels and trim (the valuable bits of the chair) and the big wood bits that actually looked like a sidecar (but were rotten).

My brother and I built a new body for the sidecar today. The construction is pretty much as per the original, plywood sheets cut to shape and connected together using struts. We decided against recreating the T&G plank floor and we used 18mm marine ply instead.

Today we went from bare sheets of ply to something that looks like a chair.

See pictures at our blog: HERE (note that the earliest posts are at the foot of the page).

Cheers
GC

guest7

  • Guest
Re: Sidecar rebuild
« Reply #1 on: November 14, 2008, 06:09:06 PM »
Gareth has been working hard, he has double skinned the chair (with insulation between) and started lining the interior with vinyl.

See his work HERE

GC

guest7

  • Guest
Re: Sidecar rebuild
« Reply #2 on: November 16, 2008, 06:33:28 PM »
Gareth has now fitted carpet to the chair

See more HERE

This week I will be turning my attention to prepping my XBR sidecar outfit.
GC

guest7

  • Guest
Re: Sidecar rebuild
« Reply #3 on: November 23, 2008, 07:09:46 PM »
Gareth has been busy today cladding the body with aluimium panels:


See more HERE

Cheers
GC

guest7

  • Guest
Re: Sidecar rebuild
« Reply #4 on: November 26, 2008, 10:15:21 PM »
A big thanks to Jethro, it appears he has finally identified the manufacturer of the sidecar:



This is a Briggs Swift 1 and is identical with the exception of the rear windows.

Cheers
GC

guest7

  • Guest
Re: Sidecar rebuild
« Reply #5 on: November 29, 2008, 05:39:40 PM »
Woohoo! The door is on and the external work is mearing completion:


I have also been getting my two chairs sorted

See more HERE

Cheers
GC

guest7

  • Guest
Re: Sidecar rebuild
« Reply #6 on: November 30, 2008, 01:49:17 PM »
Gareth's been busy, he's applied vinyl to one side and the door:


Cheers
GC

guest7

  • Guest
Re: Sidecar rebuild
« Reply #7 on: December 22, 2008, 10:01:30 PM »
Gareth has attached his chassis to the bike. The engineer who was going to modify the struts decided he would make them all from scratch instead. They look lovely, but so they should for £80.



I also got my chassis back from the welders and it looks great (in a mad short way)

See more HERE

GC

guest288

  • Guest
Re: Sidecar rebuild
« Reply #8 on: December 23, 2008, 04:22:39 PM »
Looking good there GC

themoudie

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 4755
Re: Sidecar rebuild
« Reply #9 on: December 23, 2008, 11:57:29 PM »
The engineer who was going to modify the struts decided he would make them all from scratch instead. They look lovely, but so they should for £80.GC

Cheap GC!  :) Price of metal + engineer @£30/hr + VAT@15% up here would make your eyes water! :o

I hope it all goes to plan for you both.

Regards, Bill.

guest7

  • Guest
Re: Sidecar rebuild
« Reply #10 on: December 28, 2008, 11:02:42 AM »
Gareth has fitted the chassis to the bike and he has given it a quick trial run. See film of it HERE

Cheers
GC

guest7

  • Guest
Re: Sidecar rebuild
« Reply #11 on: March 05, 2009, 10:37:50 PM »
Just to close off this thread, I thought I'd bring it up to date.

Gareth finished the chair and rode it to Austria and back and then to the Dragon Rally. He'd enjoyed the whole project and the outfit had performed well, managing 65-70mph@50mpg. When he got back he thought about it and the money he'd shelled out and he made the decision to sell the outfit complete on Ebay.

The buyer ended up paying £1,100 for the complete rig and he arrived with his wife and then rode it back to Nottingham with no problems.

So, after nearly 3,000 miles, he recovered most of the money he'd spent on the project. For him the enjoyment had been the whole adventure of building the chair and riding it to Austria so he doesn't see the time spent in the workshop as wasted.

When we were at the Dragon a lot of people commented on how they had been viewing the project's progress via the blog which was really nice. In fact the bloke who bought the rig had also been visiting the blog before it came up for sale.

gareth will have another chair sometime, but for now he is concentrating on getting his '02 Bandit 1200 back on the road.

As for me, I will shortly be bolting my old Wasp chair back onto an XBR for use as a kid's taxi and bolting a proper tradesman's box onto a chassis fixed to my CB500.

GC

guest7

  • Guest
Re: Sidecar rebuild
« Reply #12 on: March 17, 2009, 12:10:30 AM »
I have added the final posts to the sidecar blog. If anyone is interested then you can see it HERE

Cheers
GC