Interesting, what you say about the 3 speed and reverse. I had a 49, 45 cu. in. and needed a transmission. The only one I could find had the 3 and reverse. One day after a adult beverage, the other riders with me dared me to ride it backwards out the driveway to the road. Well, I made it about 10 feet and went down! After that I put a bolt in the slot where reverse is engaged. I later had a 1951 Panhead 74 with sidecar and I don't think it had the adjustable triple trees. But then I didn't know much about sidecars then. It came with an engine sprocket I think had two teeth less than stock for pulling the sidecar. I also used the bike as a solo for out in the pasture gathering up the cows and such. It slowed it down for rough ground running. Wish I had that rig today.
Ralph
Originally written by SidehackRalf on 9/22/2007 2:31 AM
Interesting, what you say about the 3 speed and reverse. I had a 49, 45 cu. in. and needed a transmission. The only one I could find had the 3 and reverse. One day after a adult beverage, the other riders with me dared me to ride it backwards out the driveway to the road. Well, I made it about 10 feet and went down! After that I put a bolt in the slot where reverse is engaged. I later had a 1951 Panhead 74 with sidecar and I don't think it had the adjustable triple trees. But then I didn't know much about sidecars then. It came with an engine sprocket I think had two teeth less than stock for pulling the sidecar. I also used the bike as a solo for out in the pasture gathering up the cows and such. It slowed it down for rough ground running. Wish I had that rig today.
Ralph
Yep, Harley used to cater quite a bit to the Harley sidecar crowd. One of my first jobs was riding a sidecar delivering blueprints in Chicago. They called it "shagging".
The bikes were 1950's HD rigid Panheads fitted with the Harley commercial box for holding packages. They were stock with an aluminum HD governor ball stuck in the carburetor around the buttterfly. Although this limited maximum rpms, it gave almost monumental torque when starting off. These bikes also had smaller engine sprockets to help pull the load and were fitted with three speed and reverse sidecar transmissions.
I was only 16 years old at the time. the manager would call me every morning to come and fill in when one of the riders for the agency called in sick. There were abot 50 bikes in all so I worked every day for two summers. I learned to ride a sidecar that way. That was more than 50 years ago and I learned to love sidecars at the time. There was no training. Just get on and ride. I would ride close to 100 miles a day and I never had even one close call. There was also no riding training of any sort at the time. You took your chances.
So that's why I like my HD rig. It reminds me of that period in my life.
That's also why I leave my bike stock. I've had racers and I prefer the tractability of a stock engine with it's low down torque.
gnm109
