Sidecar with a difference

Hi everybody, I've been absent for a while because I've been looking after my elderly Mum and then on top of that this disability I live with decided to have itself a relapse and I've been ill. With Mum now living in a rest home because I can no longer give her the 24 hour care she needs I've been spending my recovery time looking over my file of Velocar related pictures and notes with a view to planning out a build once I'm back on my feet again.

To make things easier for myself I've been thinking over what I have in the parts pile with regard to building a a velocar with the minimal amount of metal cutting to actually end up with a useful chassis to build the velocar on. Then it struck me, - I've had this sidecar rickshaw frame hanging around for sometime now and it would be perfect for creating the type of sidecar based cyclecar that was known as a 'Sociable' back in the early 1920s. The original 'tractor' for the rickshaw is a heavyweight 'Phoenix' bicycle which has unfortunately been in a prang at some stage of its life and bent the forks. This is not exactly the most difficult thing to fix and since I would want to brace and modify the forks anyway so I didn't see this as being a problem.

Then I found this illustration of a French Sociable named 'La Blake' and I knew that I was on the right track. What I intend to do is make a front wheel drive arrangement following the Blake layout and attach it to the front of the Phoenix frame to replace the front fork. The engine will be a Villiers and I will be fitting up a recumbent type pedalling arrangement via countershaft in the sidecar body that will drive the back wheel as is normal.

I do have a Chinagirl engine, but I thought I'd keep that for a Mixte framed bicycle conversion I have in mind as I don't think a Chinagirl would live very long hauling a sidecar around. Villiers engines might be old, but they are bombproof

Once I'm feeling better and it decides to be a sunny day outside I'll haul out the Phoenix and the sidecar frame to get their pictures took as well as dig about and find all the useful treasures I've had hidden away for my velocar build. I do still have the original rickshaw body which is fairly shabby and would need rebuilding to suit its new role. The only thing is in Asia they build these things from planks of wood and they are heavy. It might just be better to start with a clean slate and build a traditional type sidecar bodyshell from plywood and be done with it.

My workshop is an absolute mess due to having been a general dumping ground for the past few months so the first task will be cleaning it out and setting everything to rights again.

I already own a fluxed wire MIG welder, but have the opportunity to buy a proper arc welder so I'm seriously looking at that.

Hi Steve, I've been catching up with your amazing Monark sidecar and Indian Tricar threads as I haven't visited the forum for a long while.

According to the brief French article that accompanied the La Blake illustration the front wheel drive setup worked vey well indeed. My ability to read French isn't great, but it was good enough to tell me that this unusual little cyclecar possessed good handling characteristics. I think this is because rather than the front forks having to pull the vehicle they are in fact pushing against the steering pivot which provides a castering action due to having the wheel mounted on a trailing arm.
I particularly like the way the engine is mounted at the front and low down as well. Perhaps not quite in the same class as a Morgan, but fun all the same.

I know what you mean about aging Steve, when I was younger I rode motorcycles and sidecar outfits everywhere in all weathers, but now at 58 I'm looking forward to having a little vehicle to sit in that has more weather protection than a motorcycle. Don't worry I'm on the mend though and it won't be long before I can get back into my workshop again and start building.

I spent yesterday doing a little creative staring and came up with an approach to building the front wheel drive assembly that will use bicycle parts and tubing alone. For a while there I had an idea going with would've involved Morris Minor front suspension components complete with a torsion bar, - but then I came to my senses because the whole thing was starting to turn into a full blown cyclecar and not a motorised velocar at all!
I tried to work up some sketches only I found I was too tired to concentrate properly and the sketches went in the bin because they were so awful. The way I see it is that on the day I will simply gather a pile of bike frames and parts, a hacksaw and my welding gear and I'll design it as I go with the aid of a straight edge, a ruler and a good helping of common sense. Possible some CAD (cardboard aided design) will be involved, but we'll see how we go.

The front wheel is going to be built around a moped back wheel hub with a drum brake and a nice simple cush drive arrangement for the drive sprocket. A 26 inch rim will get laced to this hub to take a 26x2 & 1/2x something or another heavyweight tricycle tyre. The back pedal driven wheel will have the same rim and tyre size along with a 3 speed Sturmey Archer coaster brake hub. The tyres, rims and hubs I already have, but I think I'm going to have to do some digging in the 'stores' to find some spokes the right length to lace up and build up the driven front wheel.

My aim is to make this Sociable sidecar type velocar as much like something from the 1920s as I can. That means no plastic or fibreglass, only plywood, wood, brass and steel to be used. I already have a lovely period correct brass car headlamp complete with genuine dents and a nice patina which I'm going to use on this velocar. Photos later, I'm not so well today.

Ibedayank said:

1910 A.C. Sociable
http://www.simoncars.co.uk/ac/sociable.html

Click to expand...

The AC Sociable is nice, but I want to stay away from a three track vehicle if I can. I live in a rural district and having a centrally tracking wheel wheel getting hooked up on the ridge between the wheeltracks once I head off the ashpalt is no fun.

I rode sidecars as a practical form of transport and car replacement for quite a few years when I was younger. Once you get the hang of it everything becomes second nature and even cornering at speed safely becomes easy to do. I built up and owned two sidecar outfits as well as building up one for someone else and they were all good to ride with no real vices. My own outfits were firstly based around a Jawa all alloy single pot 250 scrambles motor and my second one was built around a Honda CB350 twin. The third one I built up was for a Honda CB125 and was much lighter than my own outfits, but lots of fun to ride all the same.

The Jawa outfit had a very fluid spec over the time I owned it as I used it as a test bench for learning all about setting up a sidecar. The sidecar mounts were ridgid and the sidecar wheel was unsprung. At first the sidecar wheel was a small diameter wheel intended for lightweight trailers, but I swiftly changed that out for a proper spoked motorcycle wheel as a lot of my riding back then to get to work was over gravel roads and the smaller wheel kept dropping into potholes and wrenching the whole outfit around. The old Jawa scrambles motor could goooooo though and it was a lot of fun. I had to change out the gear cluster in the gearbox for a normal road set of ratios as the scrambles gearset wasn't ideal for sidecar hauling, but apart from that I did nothing more to the engine to make it a good sidecar tractor.
At the time nobody wanted Jawa motorcycles here in New Zealand and they could be found at the dump for nothing. These days they've become classics and I can't believe the prices folk are asking for them even in rough condition.

With the Honda CB350 I used all I'd learned from the Jawa when it came to laying out the sidecar frame. For the first time I put suspension on the sidecar wheel using a trailing link leaf spring suspension setup inspired by that on an Indian motorcycle. This worked very well and was completely trouble free. At the time I had a small business doing motorcycle repairs and I'd go out and collect customers' bikes using the outfit so it was a fairly serious piece of kit. The largest bike I ever carried was a 650 Kawasaki twin which gives you some idea of how well built my Honda outfit was.
Along the way I discovered that a Suzuki GT360 triple rear wheel would roll straight into the Honda swingarm and with its bigger drum brake, larger sprocket and heavy duty cush drive it made for a major improvement to my Honda outfit. I also fitted Honda CB350-4 clutch plates to the CB350 twin engine because they were much more solidly made and a complete drop in replacement. I was going to setup brakes on the sidecar wheel and even got as far as fitting a braked wheel and laying out the brake cable, but then my circumstances changed (marriage breakup) and I had to sell the outfit before I had the brake connected up.
I'd also made a start on a Suzuki triple powered outfit with a driven sidecar wheel using parts from a Triumph Herald car, but that never got anywhere near being rideable before my marriage went west.

A flexibly mounted sidecar frame or tilting sidecar wheel is something that I've never tried as my outfits were built up for dealing with unmade rural roads and carrying heavy loads. Personally I don't think they would work on any kind of heavier outfit and are only really for a lightweight setup. One reason why I don't drive sidecar outfits anymore is that they need good arm muscles and upper body strength to drive them properly. Building a trailing link front fork was on the list for the Honda, but I never got that far either (sigh). I will say though that my kids loved riding in the Honda's sidecar despite it being a utility type set up (think small pickup truck body on a sidecar frame). I had a small seat and seat belt arrangment that I could fit into the utility body as needed so they were quite safe.

Anyway that's enough rambles down memory lane for me. If I can find any surviving photos of my sidecar outfits I'll post them in this thread, but don't hold your breath.......

Edit: Oh and yes I agree Silverbear, people do seem to like sidecar outfits and they make people smile when they see them. Make your bike memorable, - put a sidecar on it!