By Your Faith Shall Ye Ride

BY YOUR FAITH SHALL YE RIDE

What it’s like controlling a weight distribution of 35.9/37.5/26.6%

As will be ascertained by looking at the pictures, what we have got here is a Honda 750 with Bingham sidecar, referred to in other countries as a Combination, an Outfit, i Sidevogn or perhaps uno Apparecchio Diabolico. Those readers of more mature years may remember when the police in New York and Chicago used sidecars (and remember the little cast-iron toy replicas) or perhaps recall WWII movies of the Wermacht en route in Russia with their big Zundapp hookups. Those last, incidentally, still command a hefty price in certain parts of Europe because of two-wheel rear drive. At any rate, sidecars have been around for as long as there have been motorcycles with power enough to pull them. Tradesmen with deliveries to make found it easy to clamp a flatbed or box sidecar on to “Old Puke,” while for young married couples with little money, a sidecar meant that Mother didn’t have to perch on the flapper bracket holding Baby. Insurance and running costs were very low compared to the rudimentary saloon cars of the day so that even recently in England it was no uncommon sight to see Poppa motoring down to the seaside with Mum and the youngest kids in the box while the eldest daughter rode behind, her pigtails streaming in the breeze. Sporting sidehacks were often made of cleverly fashioned wickerwork, oilcloth on wooden frame, linoleum, or even doped linen while a number of English makers produced bikes especially suited for the job. BSA with the Vee Twins and “sloper.” Matchless and others were highly regarded, most side valvers (flatheads) down to 250 cc went into harness. Harleys of course were popular, while P and M made a long and seldom changing production run out of sidecar haulers with their 600-cc Panther. Those characters with sporting instincts often hooked ,up a big Brough Superior or (later) Vincent HRD to get better-than-sports-car performance.

Racing sidecars you know all about so I won’t go into it: A little warty thing stuck on the side of a BMW with the passenger climbing all over the outfit. The passenger, or “monkey,” has to be brave as well as quick or he wakes up on a hard table with a whole lot of blokes in white coats shaking their heads. Did you know that John Surtees started his career riding hack for his father? Denis Jenkinson, the celebrated English journalist, used to race with Norton-ist Eric Oliver? And that Sylvia Osterberg, the meek-looking Swedish rally driver, used to crew for her husband? Some nerve indeed as the drivers drift those things under road racing conditions, even around the Isle of Man where stone walls and other hardware are as much a feature of the landscape as pubs. I remember a photo taken at Spa, the very fast Belgian circuit that today’s Formula 1 pilots are afraid to use any more, showing a Norton Manx and two BMW outfits through Stavelot corner. It looks sharp, is banked, and the FI cars do it practically flat out. Anyway, here are these three outfits in the rain . . . drifting. No AAA slide with the front wheel cocked but a proper drift. The forks are bending, tires are munged over, spokes are curved, rear wheels are at an odd angle, passengers are peeking out. drivers are down on the tanks, spray is flying, all three outfits are within touching distance of each other, and all six people are smiling. Marvelous. One hundred and twenty miles per hour in the rain on an essentially unstable outfit and they are smiling. Marvelous. Bloody hell.

Henry N. Manney

The outfit under test has been around our office for a while. Originally it was commissioned by Joe Parkhurst as a conversation piece for one of his motorcycle shows, hence the lurid green color and “Cycle World Staff Car” inscription. Honda provided a 750E. Doug Bingham of Side Strider in Van Nuys, California cobbled up the sidecar, and like most things relating to racing or shows, it was started too late, arrived in an incomplete state, was never really finished but caused a sensation nevertheless. Subsequently, it was ridden a bit and modified a bit, including going up about four teeth at the back, and what with one thing and another got stuffed into the corner of the garage with clouds of bad karma floating around its head. Until one day 1 said. “What the heck are you going to do with that thing?” and Girdler said, “You are going to test it.” With that remark the karma cloud materialized with remarks such as, “Len has the carburetors and there ain’t no battery and the rear swing arm is bent and the front tire has about had it.” So we got the carbs back from Len and got a battery and a front Dunlop and put too much oil in the tank and looked at a plug and pumped up the tires and all gathered expectantly in the parking lot. The Moment of Truth had come.

It is all very well to approach a Honda 750 with heavy two-seater saloon sidecar mit jaunty air but another matter entirely to ride it. However, the bike was fired up with a bit of coughing from the two-yearold gas in the tank and carefully looking about to check the controls. I found my left foot resting on the ground. Dummy. So Low was selected and off we went, to find out immediately why nobody would touch it with a barge pole. Leaning did no good as that fence approached, application of the rear brake produced a pronounced veer to the left, application of the front brake produced wagging in the forks, and only a mighty heave on the bars galley-slave fashion got us around the left-hander. Righthanders were worse, if possible, as the car wanted to pick up and pivot on its sidecar wheel simultaneously and the bike settled on its suspension which was clearly too soft. So that is why everybody used Harley flatheads with hardtails and girder forks. Oh dear. It took about 15 laps around the parking lot (you can bet I wore my helmet as did the passenger) to get acquainted and then we decided to drive it to lunch. That was a traumatic experience as not only did it have three-wheel bump steering and precarious braking, but terminal oversteer worthy of the seven-litre Auto Union. One tiny look over the left shoulder to change lanes and you were in that lane. And as a capper, as we swung grandly into the parking lot of the restaurant, the rear wheel shot out from under and we did a nice sideways hop for a few feet. Too much oil had gone out the breather onto the rear tire. But we didn’t fall down! Nossir.

Clearly something was wrong. Thousands of people couldn’t be driving these things around handling like that. The Honda was the first bike I ever sat on that I looked around for the shoulder harness. You couldn’t believe it. For a start the sidecar and motorcycle leaned away from each other like siblings at a kissing bee and secondly the Honda suspension was sacked. The first thing to do was pump the tires to about 40 psi, do the preload adjustment on the Konis, and let some air out of the fat little sidecar tire. Part of the trouble was undoubtedly my lack of experience with the device and so I put about 200 miles on it here and there, not hating every minute of it but pressing on with the grim and futile determination of the palace eunuch flirting with Scheherezade. “I have driven worse handling affairs than this,” 1 would mutter while a bumpy right-hander sent me shooting to the opposite verge; “No you haven’t,” a little voice would answer as the sidecar nose would pogo up and down on an apparently glass-smooth road. Visions of wife and kiddies flitted before me, not to mention the redhead I never scored with. Just by accident, while giving all the neighborhood kids rides, it was discovered that more weight in the hack helped matters somewhat roadholdingwise but of course the dodgy braking was pushed to the point of shopping for ejection seats and parachutes.

An impasse had been reached and it was time for a consultation with Bingham. A desperate search was made for trailers big enough and when one was found, there was nothing hefty enough around to pull it. The Tech Ed volunteered to follow me out with a dustpan to pick up the pieces but I decided on having my wife follow me up as she likes sad songs and besides, she can do Hail Marys much faster. I will draw a veil over the 60 miles of freeway out to Van Nuys but suffice it to say that 1) the outfit was too unsteady to drive in the fast lane 2) the slow or truck lane was infernally bumpy. Part of the problem of stability, I find, is that the sidecar wheel on its trailing arm has only about two inches of movement and said movement is very stiff indeed (by necessity) with nobody aboard as otherwise with two bods, picnic lunches, cooler and dog, the suspension would be bottomed. Anyway, I zigzagged all the way up there, feeling the Peterbilt Blowby Factor with great accuracy, and was very happy indeed to see the Roscoe Blvd. off ramp. The only trouble was that my hands were welded to the grips by that time and the fingers almost didn’t get to brake and clutch levers. The only good part of that voyage, besides finding that I was tougher than I thought, was discovering that the Honda is a useful old nail indeed with plenty of unfussy smooth power.

Doug Bingham is a happy soul with lots of sidecar experience and gently poohpoohed my stories. After examining the rig of the outfit and the linkage between sidecar and bike (which had been flexing like bubble gum and coming unslid on the way up) he didn’t bother to drive it. Instead he let me try his Watsonian outfit with a Honda similar to mine and then promised to change our linkage to Watsonian type plus stiffen up the Honda. Watsonians, by the way, are an old-line English saloon sidecar of a similar design; Doug also sells (at 15838 Arminta St., Van Nuys, Calif. 91406) replicas (made in India I think) of those torpedo-shaped Steib sidecars . . . single seaters of course. He offered me a shot at one of those but Later. Anyway his Watsonian outfit was much much steadier and could be hurtled along at a great rate; the main difference between his and the CW one (besides handling!) was that the sidecar didn’t deflect the rig so much and the steering was much heavier. This turned out to be because his keeps the stock triple clamps while ours, to cut down on steering effort, had had new ones made which reduce the trail from approximately four inches to about one inch. He also gave me a brochure containing handy hints about sidecars such as there should be anywhere between one-half to two inches (depending on the bike) of toe-in between bike and hack, that sidecar wheel brakes were regarded as a Bad Thing, and that you should learn to use “LocTite” as losing the sidecar in full flight is even worse. A real eye opener was a ride i i his Watsonian (complete with intercom) on the freeway. Some of my passengers had compared the experience to being like one of those fairground thingies that gets flung about at the end of an arm. I felt rather that I was in a plywood coffin being hustled to the Last Judgment by an especially repellent herd of Fiends. Comes from looking at too many old Flemish paintings. The view from that level, and a rather low level at that, must be the same that a torpedo spinner gets going through a school of dolphins. Hubnuts, tailpipes, bumpers, bottoms of shock absorbers; all appeared and disappeared with wonderful agility as Doug weaved his way through traffic. And when he drifted his way through the off ramp! Goodness gracious. Well, at least it handled.

After a decent interval I went to get the outfit back and Doug had, as he promised, put about 150-lb.springs on the rear Konis, reworked the bike-to-hack linkage including welding an extension under the car’s nose, and fitted air caps to the forks (also new seals) which were then pumped up to 10 psi. So off I went, feeling much better about the whole thing, and promptly found out that the outfit still didn’t like the truck bumps on the San Diego Freeway so I shot off onto the Ventura. After showing the vehicle off to some cycle racers I know in Hollywood (their verdict . . . Unsanitary) I got home and the ride is still a little precarious on the rough truck lanes, even with more experience. I called Bingham about it and after some cogitation he allowed that the trouble was probably the special triple clamps, or triple trees as he calls them. Since one drives the outfit by steering it instead of leaning, i.e. by pushing on one handlebar or the other, the reduction in trail takes away the tendency to travel in a straight line and thus makes it more vulnerable to bumps. In fact, he suggested that when the sidecar was finally unhooked. I not ride the Honda solo with the special triple clamps as it would be too unstable at speed. Additionally, he had put a sticker on the speedo that stated “Think Power Steering.”

After putting quite a few more miles on the machine, I have got a different theory although his is right up to a point. On fairly smooth roads we now manage much more bumpy sections than before without trouble aside from a lot of clattering from the Wixom fairing (otherwise excellent) and rattles from the hack suspension which could be shot as well. Furthermore, either two 50-lbbags of wild bird seed or Kenny Gouldsmith, a rotten little kid up the street, make a wonderful difference in stability by compressing two motorcycle shock/spring units. I think the limited travel and extreme stiffness of the CW sidecar’s suspension, especially since the two rear wheels aren’t in the same plane, is the villain, since Doug told me the Watsonian has more travel and is softer to boot. If I were to commission one of these sidecars built, I would have (besides an integral roll cage, shoulder harness, sun roof, icebox, and a potty) a lot longer shock and softer spring on the swing arm or perhaps even torsion bar suspension. The brakes, curiously enough, work fine now.

Now that it handles better, I am beginning to enjoy myself and not go all solid when approaching a corner. Left hand bends at speed feel good and are only limited by the adhesion of the rear Pirelli trials tire which Bingham recommends. Right-handers are a bit dodgier, mainly because the box wants to lift, but the stiffening of the Honda's suspension has helped that immeasurably. In moments of stress when the whole plot gets very light. the drill is to trail the front brake a bit while accelerating gently at the same time. This effect apparently puts the sidecar wheel back down where it belongs. Slow right-handers should also be regarded with caution as the combination really pivots around its sidecar wheel, sort of like a power boat, and you can have it up on the curb with predictable results. The usual sidecar bugaboo of front fork shake hasn’t appeared except on the truck whoopdies (there is a VW steering damper fitted) although there is a very slight woggle at low speed. I am definitely getting used to the quick steering; really a very delicate job that requires fine movements at speed. The steering does tend to go over itself on slow corners especially to the left but in that case the front tire just scrubs. Just as an experiment I took it on a smooth dirt road and should have done so earlier; the front tire really shows the forces involved and if I had one of these things, mag wheels would be the way to go. Very exhilarating on the dirt and one gains new respect for Freddy Ellsworth, who used to go desert racing with his hack.

When our new President boosts gas up to $2 a gallon and only the politicians are riding around in decent cars, here is the way I am going to go. There is comfortable motorcycling behind your fairing, the strong Honda has all the power needed (I keep beating people in drag races), reliability is first class although shaft drive would be nice, the box gives room for trendy dollies and food, a spare can be mounted on the back, and all the time you are racking up about 40 mpg and have interesting (to say the least, judging from Bingham’s) handling to play with. Shall we go off to the races my deah? Chawmed.