custom sidecar for 650 cafe

[jaksnomad]

So I'm new to the whole forum discussion thing not to mention this site. Here's a little background: bought a 74 XS650 street tracker/hackjob that handled like absolute crap due to the previous owners love of the sawzall. I love to work with and weld aluminum, so after a lot of hours I managed to drastically fix the handling issues and shave a considerable amount of weight and turned it into a pretty sweet café style bike. Some of the custom mods (pretty much all the aluminum is hand built): seat pan, battery box that mounts flat under seat, rear inner fender, headlight mount, steering dampner, modern master cylinder w/ remote reservoir, SS braided brake line, aluminum puke tank w/ AN fittings, rear sets, and last but absolutely not least a set of bitchn custom triple trees made by my pops on his EZ Trak Bridgeport. There's other stuff done also but I can see this is already turning into a moby dick novel. Anyways I haven't been able to ride it in a little over three years due to my other love of motocross racing (I suffered a complete SCI at my T5 vertebrae leaving me paralyzed from the chest down) fortunately I still have the use of my fingers, hands, and arms (getting some of my abs back as well). I had an RD350 in my shop that my friend had asked me to build for his wife, well it was put on the back burner as it was racing season. So this project ended up being probably the best mental and physical therapy for someone who loves to turn wrenches and weld shit. It took me a lot longer than it probably should have but I finally finished it about a month ago. So here I am after much sitting in my shop looking at my XS on its lift and I've come up with the obvious solution to get my knees back in the breeze; build a sidecar, correction build a 60's era salt flat racer style side car. I think it'll go with the aluminum look/style that the bike has nicely. This brings me to an issue that really needs to be addressed: I need to be able to reverse this thing mechanically. I have looked at many bikes with side cars and there are a few out there with reverse gear, but these are all shaft driven or pre-unit bikes. Has anyone on this site EVER heard of putting a reverse gear on a 650 w/ a side car? I have a few outlandish ideas but none that are really sounding logical at this time. I am open to ideas. Thanx guys! I've attached a couple pics of my 650 and the RD (I know this isn't a "smoker" website, but it has two wheels and aint a scooter).

 

[resto]

If I were to tackle something like this, I would be tempted to look at putting an electric reverse only on the sidecar. Might be able to get away with just a small starter motor, one way clutch, and some reduction gearing. If the stock XS electrical couldn't handle the load, a separate larger battery could be located in the sidecar itself.
Bonus would be that you wouldn't have to make any modifications to the XS itself (e.g. jackshafts, etc).

There are kits out there for trikes, but they have the advantage of driving both rear wheels. As a point of interest, when Honda Goldwings got big and fat, their solution to add reverse was an electric motor.

Will be interesting to see that aluminum sidecar once you are done.

 

[Tomterrific]

I've seen a couple of wheelchair sidecar rigs and they go everywhere. I talked to a guy at VMD in 1997 (?) that said he ran his rig up on the sidewalk but no one said a thing because of his chair.

I'm wondering if reverse could be handled with a generator belt driven to a wheel. The generator would work to charge a good sized car battery while the bike was moving and reversing the polarity would turn the generator into a reverse motor. Garden tractors use a generator for a starter motor.

Tom

 

[cbxtacy]

I've had a few sidecar rigs over the years and with careful planning hardly ever had to roll it backwards. But in your case it's still nice to have reverse available. I'd look for an old motocross rig and build a body for it. You seem to be fairly adept at making things. I'd go electric for reverse and get an automotive battery for juice/ballast. I've even considered an electric motor with a wheel on a lever I could pull down and touch the chair wheel. Good luck on your build.

 

[fredintoon]

Hi jaksnomad,
sorry to hear that your injuries force you onto 3 wheels.
I'm with cbxtacy on this one.
KISS.
Starter motor with a small diameter friction wheel instead of a Bendix.
Rig it to pivot by means of a parking brake lever to force the friction
wheel down onto the s/c tire.
Handlebar thumb button and a starter relay to energise the motor.

 

[Square Circle]

Sounds like a cool project. I'm sorry about your injury as well. I dont want to sound stupid ,but do you plan on driving your rig from the sidecar?

 

[Scrambled]

I would look for a used electric reverse from a Gold Wing and see if you could modify it . Probably the easiest route .