I picked up my sidecar in Jan 2013. Procrastinated on the attachment process, but ultimately got it road-worthy in early June 2013. I've nearly had (3) crashes since I got it. One the day I got it making a right hand sweeping curve. Got into it too fast and the dynamics of 3-wheels are way different than 2-wheels. The 2nd was another right curve when I unintentionally flew the sidecar, then slammed on the brakes slamming the car down then being forced to the left. The 3rd was when I encountered the front wheel wobble. I had one hand on the throttle, the other holding my coffee, when the wobble started. It got way too out of control way to fast. I threw the coffee, engaged both hands and locked down front & rear brakes.
* * * READ what you can.
* * * When you get the rig PRACTICE different situations in CONTROLLED environments. I now practice intentionally FLYING the sidecar so I can practice the skills necessary to recover if it does come back up.
I've reached a comfort level that I'm taking my 2-boys and heading on ˜ 2,800 mile round trip journey this next week, one leg of which will take me across I-70 from St. Louis to KCMO. I'm comfortable, but yet conscientiously aware that my skills have much room for improvement.
Offbalance.......Yep that is it. PRACTICE till you get to know your rigs Off balance points and how to recover, I like to go to the local high school parking lots on the weekends when they are empty and practice on mine. I practiced with and without passenger and with the rig loaded for travel , cause every pound makes a difference . I also did the research trying to find out how the accident,tipping points worked but it didnt really do anything for me. You have to learn the feel of the rig and learn YOUR limits.
Thanks guys. This site is really a great resource. All of the responses have been of a positive vain and have given me the confidence to expand the ongoing formal education and situational awareness to physical, hands on seat time. I really look forward to experiencing the feel and forces exerted by this new mode of transportation and the challenge of managing them. I was also fortunate today that Mr. Stanley allowed me quite some time to converse with him about many sidecar related riding issues. He was able to verbally drive home many of the concepts that I have read here in print and more. I appreciate your generosity and patience in helping me to 'work' through this phase of moving from the motorcycle to the sidecar rig. It seems that you haven't forgotten what it must have been like when you first thought about actually driving one of these rigs.
Regards, Kent
I think your research says a lot about who you are. As i mentioned before the STEP class is well worth the time and money. Practice and wheel time will improve your abilities and make you more comfortable. BUT my main reason for responding today is i noticed we share a birthday! Mine happens to be a year earlier as i turned 63 on Sunday. Happy Birthday to a fellow sidecar enthusiast. My advice for your riding is to find a empty parking lot and push the limits. You will learn alot.
Way cool, celestial twin big brother. I look forward to the reunion. 🙂
Looks like we enjoy similar equipment also....before this 1150rt, I had a '77 bmw r100/7 solo for 17yrs.
I see you also have Hannigan cars. I'm getting the Bandito.
There's a big parking lot nearby that's calling my name. I already have the soda cans for marking off the course.
Enjoy the Journey
You may have gotten better response but some of us, well I don’t like owning up to how dumb I can be but here goes. When I got in to sidecars I had not been on a motorcycle in over 20 years due to the lost of my right leg. So I did most of my riding back roads and parking lots.
At about 2 or 3 months I made my 1st week-end trip, about 700 miles. I was on my way home about 10 miles out I came up on some road work. This was a 4 lane divided hwy. My 2 lanes were detoured to the left. To make this I had to go left then back to the right where it was ruff. The sidecar started going up and down. I forgot everything I had been doing in the parking lots and when left. No one was in the lane next to me and I just missed the divider.
Where did I go wrong? For one riding when I was too pooped out, my head was at home not where I was. And the big one riding faster than my Angle could fly.
Richard, it's refreshing to see that you don't have room on your rig for the dreadful Ego baggage...good on ya! I think most that read it, will stick it back in the memory banks and subconsciously pull it up when a similar circumstance arises for them. Every once in a while on the Motorcycle sites there will be postings like; 'close call today', 'got cut off by a cager on a cell phone', 'misjudged the curve', etc. These situations are simple reality...the more we stay aware of potential pitfalls the less likely we are to fall in the pits.
thanks
I thought that I would chime in on the topic of crashes. I would say that being aware of crashing is something that we should all think about from time to time but if it’s something that a guy and his gal is thinking about every time that they climbs onto their sidecar rig then you’re in the wrong hobby. I’ve lived a somewhat adventuress life and every adventure that I was involved with were with likeminded people. I found that every venue was full of people with the same mindset, and that is you can’t be afraid of you’re A$$. The problem is that we live in a society that’s gone overboard on everything having to be safe in our lives and when the one in a million happens then someone has to be blamed. When I say the one in a million I’m talking about the one million to one chance that something disastrous will happen. Do an observation the next time the news mentions about a product that’s been around for decades and four or seven people have been hurt or killed when there have been seven million sold to the general public. I submit the one in a million syndrome. So how does this pertain to sidecars and sidecar crashes? To start with the manufacturer that Kent is using has a stellar reputation when it comes to sidecars and their product. If they had a run on their sidecars being out there crashing then the sidecar public would be talking about it and warnings would be up all over the sidecar internet. I submit that we should put this crashing subject into prospective.
Two wheel crashes were mentioned and I must ask what they have to do with sidecar crashes? Also sidecar crashes relating to racing have no relationship to everyday driving of a sidecar. The concept of a sidecar flipping over in a left turn and how easy it is sounds interesting. I’m not going to say that it can’t be done but my group and I could never accomplish such a feat regardless of how hard we tried. I must confess that we only drove Sweet sidecars when taking very high speed left hand turns while seeing just how far we could push the limit. I will say that if a sidecar rig has the sidecar wheel lead to far forward and the rig has a forward CG. (Center of gravity) then it could flip over in a left hand turn. But a set up like mentioned would also have other problems that I would be more concerned with. The Sweet sidecars having an aft CG can go into a left hand turn at almost any speed. If we pushed the envelope turning the sidecar rig into a very sharp left hand turn at a speed way above what a would be considered prudent we could lift the motorcycle rear wheel off the ground. When this happened because of the aft CG the unit would lose forward acceleration and the front nose would scrape the ground but we could never flip the sidecar rig upside down. In conclusion could a sidecar rig flip over in a left hand turn? Yes if it was set up wrong with a forward CG and too much sidecar wheel lead. An experienced manufacturer is not about to set a sidecar rig up the wrong way.
When I was building my Sweet Sidecars we had eight crashes that we documented. Every crash was driver error with people that were not instructed on how to drive a sidecar. I put every owner that purchased a Sweet sidecar from me through a schooling session that lasted in some cases an hour and a half and they had to pass the school before they were allowed to take their sidecar rig home. Every customer passed the school and not one ever had a crash. So how did the eight crashes happen? The customers that were trained let their brothers, brother in laws, friends or next door neighbors ride their sidecar rigs without any instructions and the end result was eight sidecars being smashed up. I always thought it was funny when they brought the sidecars back to me to remount on their new bikes. The sidecars had very little damage but the bikes were totaled in four cases. I recently had a very good friend who’s been after me to build him a sidecar for years asked when he could borrow one of my rigs for the weekend to see if it was something that he really wanted. He couldn’t believe it when I told him he would have to go through my school on how to drive a sidecar before he would be allowed to borrow one of my rigs. He looked at me like I was a two headed freak. I look at it like this; you wouldn’t attempt to fly a small airplane without first receiving instructions so why would someone think that a sidecar rig is any different. They are different animals and they will bite you in the “A$$” if you don’t know what you’re doing. Some of you may be saying; “O, come on Johnny you can’t be serious your comparing apples and oranges”. Well I am serious, sidecars are a different world and without driving instructions you’re only looking for trouble. But seriously how difficult can it be? So I submit that instructions should be given before anyone attempts to go out on the open road. So what should a guy or gal do if they have no way of getting instructions close to where they live. My suggestion is to spend some time practicing in a large parking lot with no cars parked in it. I say no cars because it’s a fifty, fifty chance you will drive into a parked car; it’s just the way things sometime work out. How many of you play golf and someone will say “drive it into the water” and sure enough you hit the ball into the water.
Some may ask how I schooled my students on “how to drive a sidecar”. My technique was fairly simple in that I would start the student driving in a circle around the large parking lot that we had permission to use. I would take them around while they were sitting in the sidecar and I would start with only left hand turns. I would start out going in a circle and we would run down the straightaway at around fifteen MPH and I would turn to the left and back up the back straightaway. I would bring the speed up on the back stretch and then into the left hand turn. When I came to the imaginary start finish line I would stop and explain what the sidecar rig was doing in the turn and ask if they noticed the movement of the sidecar and the bike during the turn. I would then explain that we were next going to make two braking stops. The first stop would be at a slow speed and the second a faster panic stop and that all the turns were only going to be to the left.
I felt it important to explain so that the student understood what was going on. We would then make another lap or two with me using the front brake to stop first at a slow speed and then at a faster speed. This gave the student an understanding of how his bike would stop under a hard braking condition or situation. I would get off the bike and then it was their turn to take the handle bars and do some laps while only turning to the left with no one in the sidecar. In all they would end up doing a minimum of twenty laps always to the left finishing up each lap using the brakes. In a short time they were feeling very comfortable making left hand turns and braking. Some students took to the left hand turns easily and others took some time to get comfortable performing the move but before I moved on they could make a left hand turn at speed and do a panic stop while feeling comfortable.
A sidebar on brakes and braking:
When a customer came in looking to purchase a sidecar the subject of brakes would always come up because I would purposely bring the subject up. What I was looking for was how the customer stopped their two wheel motorcycle. Did he use the front brakes or was he a rear wheel brake only rider. Most knew how to use the front brakes along with the rear and I always knew that they would be an easy learning student when it came to learning how to stop their sidecar rig. What about the guys that were deathly afraid of using the front brakes? I had an easy way of straightening that out. When they brought in their bike to have the sidecar mounted I would back off the rear brake during the installation process. When we went out to the parking lot for the schooling I would go through the same process never changing the tutorial. I would do the panic stop using only the front brake and more than once they never noticed what brakes I was using. I would then do an extra lap with them in the sidecar explaining that I was using only the front brake and showing them how well the rig stops using just the front brake. Every time they were amazed and you could tell by the smile on their face. A teaching moment! I would then put them through the program using only the front brakes and once they were acclimated and comfortable with this new way of stopping I would then tighten up the back brake and they would then go through the left hand turning and braking program a second time. We would then shut off the bike and as they sat smiling I knew that a new plant had been seeded and they would never go back to the old way of only stopping with the rear brake.
My background has allowed me to study braking dynamics and the effective stopping power of different braking systems. Some front brakes on different vehicles will do as much as seventy eight percent of the effective braking. When building my high speed Cobra and T Buckets I spend more time on the brakes than any other part of the car and they will stop on a dime. I will say that my customers all got the opportunity to see just how far they could go with hard braking and they all went away with a different attitude when it came to the importance of the front brake and how to use them.
It’s time to look at the right hand turn and how it can ruin a good day. I would think that everyone reading this knows about how a right hand turn can bite you in the A$$. So how did we give the customer an edge or an even chance when it came to right hand turns? The first thing is my sweet sidecars are different than others in that I set the sidecar out away from the motorcycle a further distance or what we call “moving the moment”. This all started over forty years ago when I set up the first of what would be over four hundred and fifty units. This doesn’t help anyone with another type of sidecar but one thing that we did do that may help in a small way.
Some of you may be familiar with different airplanes and the instrument panel. Some planes have instruments that have green and red lines drawn on the glass surface inside of the bezel. When the needle lines up with the green line or “in the green” as it’s known, it tells the pilot that whatever instrument it is he’s looking at, he’s OK. A needle in the red is pretty much self-explanatory; “crap, you’re out of luck and Houston we have a problem”. So when the pilot looks across the instrument panel he’s looking for all “Green’s”. Within a few seconds he knows the condition of everything relating to all the instruments and the condition of his plane. Having been around planes and reading instruments form the time I was a little kid I took the same theory or practice and used it in my sidecars. We installed over three hundred “Green/Red lines” for customers on their speedometers over the years. Not every customer wanted the green and red lines but around seventy five percent had them installed, and when they came back asking for the green, red lines we always installed them. By the way there was no charge for the green, red lines. One of my Guy’s named Danny got very good at installing them. What the green and red lines give the driver, or pilot is a baseline to always be working off. For a moment think about when you’re driving your rig down the road and the only thing you have to guide you is your vision of the road ahead and the speedometer. But how do you determine if you’re headed into a right hand turn to hot. I would say past experience. But with the addition of the green and red lines on the speedometer you always have a baseline to work from. When the customer is first learning to drive his new rig he uses the green and red lines through the learning curve; using the lines becomes second nature. As it turned out most of my Sweet sidecars when mounted my way on almost any bike will have the split between the green and red lines at thirty eight to forty miles per hour. The green/ red line theory works best when you’re coming off the interstate taking a sharp right hand turn. All a driver has to do is look down and if you’re in the green you’re OK. If you’re in the red use some brake till your back in the green. I’ve been driving sidecars for over forty years and have driven over four hundred and fifty different rigs and if I don’t have my “Green/Red line” I feel naked. That may sound funny but I’m serious. Even after over a quarter of a million miles I still use the “Green/Red line” on my speedometer. I can be driving up the road at say 60 MPH and I look down and I have a baseline knowing I’m in the red but I’m on a road that has mild turns that I can take at 70 MPH if I want to. But when it’s time to pull in somewhere or if the road takes a sharp turn to the right I’m looking to see where I’m at using the Green or Red lines.
This is what the speedometer looks like on my latest rig with the Green/Red line. All the 8’s lining up was a fluke in that I saw it coming up on the 8’s and stopped and took a picture of it.
I’m not sure if the way we have done it for over forty years will help anyone but if one person learned one thing then it was worth me responding to this thread. Good luck to everyone out there and happy sidecar riding. O, and keep the bottom side down always look out for those right hand turns and keep an eye out for the lurkers.
Johnny Sweet,
Sweet Sidecars:
Johnny, I have ridden Motorcycles continuously for over 45 years. When I started, I did my research, received basic and advanced MSF training and have practiced continuously. I quickly became quite a proficient and adventurous rider as attested by companion riders. I view the transition to sidecars in a similar vain as my previous motorcycle endeavor. I agree completely that paranoia and fear are unnecessary frames of mind. However, I have and will continue to seek awareness in all aspects of my life so that paranoia and fear do no rule my life and that pitfalls are minimized. I was informed by several knowledgeable people that the Hannigan Bandito is excellently suited as a secure and safe match for my BMW 1150RT. In addition, I had already reached the conclusion that my research on this site, with excellent and appropriate responses from caring individuals, had prepared me to begin the actual riding phase on the new dedicated sidecar rig.
Point well taken with the 'one in a million syndrome'. However, I respectfully submit that the insurance companies, DOT's, law enforcement, highway safety statistics et., may have different math....S/TEP and other training and awareness mechanisms exist to prevent Crashes.
I for one have learned a lot from your response and will refer to this thread occasionally in the future as another reminder.
Hi Kent,
With you learning a lot made it worth writing the post. I didn't mean that sidecars were a million to one when it came to crashes it was just a reference relating to today's world and the million to one theorem.
I understand that you have been riding for years and this new adventure will sure as heck be a fun time. Welcome to the third wheel world and may it be the best of times.
Johnny
Thank you sir...much appreciated.
offbalance - 7/20/2013 9:14 AM
... if you ... are aware of an actual turn over type crash or have a link to such, I would appreciate hearing of it.....
Fellow sidecarist BeemerBob from Texas was recently injured in a accident on his Ural rig (Lyekka) traveling the Continental Divide Route in Wyoming. I hope he doesn't mind me posting this excerpt from his blog available for public view at: http://beemerbob.wordpress.com/ :
... Its starting to get late and I want to get back to the campsite before dark, so I lead us to a wider, more level gravel road so that we can make better time.
And then …
I hit a right curve too hot causing the sidecar to go in the air a little bit. I was able to get it under control but by time I did, I had gone off the road a little bit. Once stopped I then set out to get back on the road. I’m in the lead and I think if I can hurry I can get back on the road before Nadeem and Kenneth see that I had missed a turn. I wanted to save myself the grief I know I would get if they knew. I put the rig in first, give it some gas and slowly let out the clutch
And then …
Well now I not exactly sure what happened, but I guess my hand had slipped off the clutch or for some reason the clutch grabbed before I was ready. The clutch dumped and I am now heading to the other side of the road at full throttle, I hit a ditch and a tree stump on the other side causing Lyekka to go airborne and flip completely over tossing me to the ground
And then …
Ouch! At least I am lucky that the rig did not land on top of me. Sadly Nadeem and Kenneth saw gas leaking form the upside down Ural so they had righted it before they thought to take pictures. I was upset that they did not get a picture of Lyekka napping but at least Nadeem had the foresight to get a picture of me still on the ground.
Once I am up, it is apparent that I am hurt and need to go to a hospital and get checked out ... final diagnoses is multiple fractured ribs....
Lee
MB5+TW200+CRF250L+GTV300+INT650
XL883R w/Texas Ranger Sidecar
Zuma 50F + Burgman w/Texas Sidecar<Mrs. SwampFox
You look like you are smelling the roses closely.
Glad it wasn't any worse than the ribs, they are painful enough!
