New Member who built 450 sidecars back in the day

Sweet Classic Sidecar for 2015

Since my recent posts I've received dozens of emails from many of my followers and even a few from some new sidecar enthusiasts. Bob Hunt a regular on this forum even came down for a visit. Bob's visit was very enjoyable; like minded people always enjoy each others company. So I would like to thank everyone that's taken the time to write and visit.

Just out of the shop is a new Sweet Classic Sidecar. This new sidecar rig is a little different with the metal flake paint on the bike. I was asked if I could do something with the upholstery to match the metal flake. I hadn't stitched metal flake vinyl in decades and figured "this should be fun". It was and the results are interesting. When I took this new rig out for it's shake down run it almost drove itself. It's taken me some time on these newer big bikes but I've figured out the combination between the sidecar wheel lead, tow in, and bike camber so that a shimmy damper is not needed. I did make a mistake some months back when describing the front end on a Yamaha Road Star when I mounted one of my Sweet Classic Sidecars on it. I wrote that "no modification to the front end was needed" and I should have written "no shimmy damper was needed". I was quickly disputed and made to look like I had no idea about the geometry and dynamics of front ends on motorcycles. My friends and I had a good laugh over that one. At the time when I was reading the so called experts dissertation I remember thinking back to 1953 when I helped my Dad when he was setting up the front end on his new Indian racing bike for the 1953 racing season. I was only eight years old at the time and had been working on the racing bikes with my Dad since my earliest memory and that was an extensive lesson on rake, trail, camber, and riding on the heal of the tire. Not forgetting handle bar angles, left fork stops and opening up the right side of the forks for more clearance when he was in a controlled full power slide/drift. The things I learned way back then still come out today. I just picked up a 200 MPH Suzuki Super Road Racing Bike that came off the Super Speedways with the Hayabusa racing engine. The first thing that I looked for on my new racing bike was the fork stops. I knew that the road racers limited the amount that the front forks can travel from left to right. They were the first things that I removed. Ya, I'm going to install one of my Sweet SL-220 Sidecars on this road rocket and I need as much front end turning travel as I can get. It came with fourteen sets of gears/sprockets and I will set it up for the street. Three hundred and seventy one pounds and they won't give out a HP number. It should be a neat toy for a seventy year old former racer. I digress; getting back to the shimmy damper. I always wondered why the big bike company that built thousands of sidecars for their big bikes never made the changes so that a shimmy damper would not be needed. But if one thinks about it for a minute the cost would be astronomical to make changes or re design the sidecar frame and how it sets up to the bike. I'm betting that I'm not the first to figure this out and implement it. There are many good sidecar manufacturers in the world and I can't be the only one to have figured it out.

Thanks for reading.

Johnny Sweet PE.

And thank you, Mr. Sweet, for writing. Always learn something from your articles.

Hey Johnny .... please shoot me an email or better yet give me a call at shop...570 837 5120. I do have pics of the sidecar of yours we mounted a while back.

Johnny Sweet - 2/22/2015 8:48 PM

Sweet Classic Sidecar for 2015

Just out of the shop is a new Sweet Classic Sidecar. This new sidecar rig is a little different with the metal flake paint on the bike.

I received this email last night and figured that I would share it with my friends and followers.

I'm thinking that the new sweet sidecar rig turned out better than any of us ever thought that it would. I'm finding that these new motorcycles regardless of the brand are so much better than what we had to deal with back in the 1970's. They have come such a long way and are a dream to work with. If a guy can't build a sidecar that almost drives itself he's doing something wrong. I read that one guy claims you need a modified front end or you can't drive the sidecar rig for more than a short time or some such thing. Also that many of the guys with the bigger bikes 1000 cc or larger end up selling the sidecar rigs in a year. I'm not doubting this but what kind of nonsense is that! On any of these newer bikes I haven't had to make any changes to the front ends and all of them can be driven with two fingers. I submit that if you the reader has a sidecar rig that's a bear to drive then you have something wrong with the set up; and that's all I have to say about that.

Johnny Sweet PE.

Hey Johnny, Today was nice and I took the rig out for a spin. Handled super got to run about 15 miles on 85 at 85. No problems at any speed. I got a late start today with some work but Tuesday I plan on making a day of it. Again thank you so much. You are the MAN.

Beautiful rig, Mr. Sweet. Silver in my favorite color also.

Wolfhound - 3/9/2015 8:59 PM Beautiful rig, Mr. Sweet. Silver in my favorite color also.

Yes I also like silver. Using this silver that comes from the newer Chrysler's came from a customer that picked it out. I've built three other sidecar recently using the same color code. The bike in the picture has metal flake silver on the bike and the sidecar with the Chrysler silver blends nicely with it. The owner calls his sidecar rig the "Silver Diamond". It has been a pleasure having Randy as a customer. He was all but done riding bikes because of trouble with his feet but today he's back out on the road not having to put his feet down when he comes to a stop. You have to love this sidecar stuff! Those that don't will never understand it.

Johnny

I have a silver Genuine Buddy 170i with a TowPac trike conversion and a TGB 150i with a Cozy sidecar. Bad knees and ankles keep me scootering instead of biking. I alternate between the two.

Sweet SL-220 Sidecar on a Goldwing

It only took forty years and Arthur finally got his sidecar.

Arthur and I have been best of friends for sixty years. Our Mom's worked together back in the 1950's. My Mom would invite many of the girls from work who had young boys my age to our house on Sunday's for what we called a cook out. These group visits started when I was ten and Arthur was eight years old. On many a Sunday we would have ten or more of us kids running around the yard. When the parents weren't looking we kids would head out into the woods and down to the river we went. We had eighty five acres to play in and it was like a frontier paradise. As the years went by our little group along with the neighborhood kids all became best of friends that would last a lifetime. Many of our old group have past on but those of us still around keep in touch. Years later when all of us guys that went to war came home we all grouped up again from time to time. When I started building my Sweet Sidecars Arthur would spend time at the shop helping out when he could. He had a family to raise and at the same time he was a volunteer fire fighter. He had done his time in hell in Vietnam and came back with a need to help others. So his time at the shop was limited. We talked about building a sidecar for Arthur but he didn't have a bike; after all he had cloths and food to buy for his growing kids. Years past and it just wasn't to be. When I came out with my Sweet SL-220 Arthur was around helping when he could and one day I said " take this new SL-220 body home so that when the time comes to build your sidecar you will have it". Years later in 1988 I needed a body because my old SL-220 mold was long gone. Arthur said " take my body and use that". I had no idea what he was talking about. I had forgotten that I had given him one of the first SL-220 body's all those many years earlier. He told me where it was and I went over and picked it up. He had placed it on an old chicken coop roof out of site and out of mind at a good friends farm. So I took the body that had been sitting out in the elements for years and brought it to the shop. The body was in perfect condition except for some color fading in the gelcoat. With just a little sanding and priming and it was ready for paint. I set the new SL-220 on one of my Honda 750's and drove it until some fellow came into the shop just before I was getting ready to move to South Carolina. He offered me some crazy money that I just couldn't refuse. I figures that I could pick up another bike and build one of my SL-440 later on after I moved South. I still had the original SL-440 and SL-110 molds along with the small SL-110 modifications molds that I had made the SL-220 mold from. That ended up being the last sidecar rig that I ran before I quite riding for over twenty five years. So fast forward to the present day and I was telling Arthur that I was once again building my Sweet SL-220 sidecars and that I had built a new mold from all the mold pieces. He asked about getting one built for his Goldwing. I told him that I would build one for him but that I still owed him a body. We both laughed thinking back to forty years ago when I gave Arthur the first original SL-220 body and how it had been handed back and forth between us. So I built Arthur a brand new Sweet SL-220 body and painted it in a color to match his Goldwing. For the color I called Arthur and asked him to take one of the side cover over to the paint mixing guy and get the two color code numbers so that I could match the paint. I built the body and stitched up the upholstery and tonneau cover . I then removed the upholstery and sprayed the body with the new to me base coat clear coat paint. I don't have a paint booth that's open in my shop. So I have to pick my days when it comes to painting. It's funny because some guys have argued saying "no way you painted that sidecar outside". Referring to any of the sidecars that they see. At the moment I have a 55 Chevy Gasser taking up the booth. When the paint was dry I installed the upholstery and pushed Arthur's new body over in the corner of the shop and covered it up with a sheet waiting for his arrival. Arthur drove the one thousand miles from door to door and came for a visit just after Thanksgiving. It was one of the best times. My wife and I got to spend a week with Arthur and he got to meet many of my friends along with two of my dearest friends living in the South. Not Southern guys; ones from Michigan and the others from Poland. All of us migrated to the South. It was just like old times and my friends thought that Arthur and I were brothers or something. We just laughed because we had been doing stuff togehter for sixty years. It's hard to imagine that we've never even had a disagreement in all those years. I've often thought about that and I guess it's because we started out as kids togehter and it was us and our gang against the world and no one was going to give us a break. The WW II generation that raised us were hard as nails and we had to sink or swim and we got no mercy from that bunch. We always say that it was the best thing that they ever did for us.

Once Arthur got settled in we got started on his new sidecar. As we were building the frame I put Arthur on my Red Rocket and started him
out with left hand turns. My friend John was his instructor and before long Arthur was also turning to the right and running up and down the driveway. I'm fortunate in that I have over a third of a mile in driveways to practice on. We then put him on the yellow and blue rig so that he could see how every sidecar rig has their own personality. Then onto the Honda Valkarie with the Classic sidecar. By the time we had Arthur's new sidecar built and finished he had some miles under his belt and even took the Red Rocket up to the local corner one morning for breakfast before my wife and I got up.

When designing and building the frame and setting it up to the Goldwing we had to make sure that the bike and sidecar would fit into the back of Arthur's custom enclosed trailer. He's got a neat rig. The trailer has living quarters and an area for his sidecar rig.The problem came in when we measured the width of the rear door opening. We only had five feet eight inches to work with. With the Honda being a wide bike with all the bags and accessories I had to push the sidecar right up against the bike. A little measuring and re measuring took place but in the end we had it figured out. Because the Goldwing is such a large bike when we placed the SL-220 sidecar next to it and started running the numbers the end result still came within the design box that I use. The Goldwing has air ride in the back and we set the setting to seventy one percent for the set up. Once it was completed Arthur took it out for it's shake down run. I never even got on it. A few laps around the big circle and Arthur moved the setting to sixty nine percent and we were off to the corner for it's maiden run.

It was a lot of fun building Arthur his new Sweet SL-220 sidecar. He had been waiting for almost a lifetime and we finally got it done. It was fun going around to the different places where I get my materials with Arthur. Whenever he calls to catch up he always ask where I'm at and when I tell him he remembers going after this or that. On one of our trip out away from the farm we were headed somewhere going after something and as we were driving down the road a large cloud of smoke was coming from behind a house. Arthur starts yelling "pull over and let me out". He thought that it was a house on fire and he was ready to do what fire fighters do and that's head into the house to pull anyone out that might be in their. I told him that "they are just burning leaves". Sure enough they had a big pile of leaves burning and the house wasn't on fire. He couldn't beleave that they were allowed to burn leaves like that out in the open. Up North someone would be going to jail.

Arthur's vacation got cut short when he received a call from home. An elderly lady in her 80's that allows Arthur and his fire house group to use her late husbands 1930's fire truck for the kids and parades had died that morning. A few hours later he was on his way home with his new sidecar rig stored in the back of his neat pull along trailer. Well it was fun while it lasted and it was a real pleasure building my good friend his new SL-220 Sidecar even if it did take forty years.

Thanks for reading.

Johnny Sweet PE.

It helps to have reverse.

Arthur with his new SL-220 sidecar.

A trip up to the corner.

Mr. Sweet, this is a wonderful historical piece that you have written. Hope you are saving all your writings for a future book. That was a great looking rig even if it did take 40 years to make it. Thanks for sharing this story with us.

Johnny,
His rig looks great.
Do you have any pictures from the back? or of the mounting points?
I still haven't made any headway with the 79GL and the sidecar of yours that I picked last year. Now I have a 1500 in the shop and thinking that would make a great sidecar rig.
Is the right saddlebag useable?

Eric
In Snowy VT.

I started reading ur posts from today and it is quite good and I actually liked it but I got 1 question that like in what age did u start building the sidecar and how old are you now?

Hi Nichloas,

Thanks for reading. Many have written me saying the and asking the same thing. I was just a young man of twenty six years old when I started designing my first sweet SL-110 sidecar. I would imagine that for some they have a hard time believing that a young twenty six year old would have the ability and knowledge to not only design a sidecar from scratch but build a small company from nothing but an idea at such a young age. The reader should understand that I was being trained from the time that I was eight years old to become an entrepreneur and manufacturer. It's all that I ever wanted to do. School and the military along with more school got in the way and then I needed to learn different disciplines and working trades. I worked some jobs for no pay just to learn.

Some of you may find this story interesting:

I once worked in a metal casting foundry shoveling dirt so that I could learn how to mold and pour aluminum. I had only been out of the Army a few months and I was visiting with one of my Army buddy's. As we were walking down the street a few block from his house I saw a sign on the door of a foundry looking for foundry help. My buddy and I went in and applied. The pay was $6.50 and hour; in today's world that would be $65.oo an hour. When the foreman handed my buddy and I two shovels Richard said "these hands weren't made to fit around a shovel handle" and said to me "I will see you at home". The funny thing was; Richard dug many a foxhole and filled many a sand bag in the Army but he as a civilian wasn't about to ever be using a shovel again. I took the shovel and after some instruction I went to work. Being a shoveler I was right in the thick of it all and after a few days on the job I was getting the hang of it. I had been on the job for about a week when one day I had my CIB Combat Infantrymen's badge on my sweatshirt. One of the old timers saw it and asked " where did you get your CIB" ? I told him and he then called over three of the other old timers. One by one they introduced themselves and the WW II unit they they fought in when they received their CIB. They took me under their wing and with a few hints on how to do this or that my work go easier; not that it was that hard anyways. I was interested in learning everything that I could and the old gang would rather see me working at anything but in a foundry. They all started working in the foundry when they came home from the war in late 1945 and to them they had been working in the foundry for a lifetime and didn't want to see me ending up doing the same thing. I never explained to them what my intentions were and they never asked.

I wanted to become a molder and learn how ram the sand in the molding process. So I would work as a molder during my lunch brake for no pay. When sand casting you need a mold. Molding sand is rammed into a molding flacks with a top and bottom (cope and drag) with the pattern or model of the part to be made in the center on a flat plate. The pattern (flat plate) has the shape of the part to be cast on this plate with runners for the molten aluminum to flow into the cavity. Casting aluminum or any metal parts is a science into itself. So every day at lunch I would go over to one of the molding stations and practice ramming the sand into the flasks making a sand cast mold. The molders got paid for every mold that they rammed so I was making this guy Stanley money as he was taking lunch and he sure made a big deal about it. In Stan's eyes I had something wrong with me and in my eyes Stanley was a "Big Supid" or "Big Stoop" . So I always referred to Stanley as "Big Stoop". He didn't like it but I was making him money as I learned how to mold during lunch break plus I'm thinking that he knew I would knock him on his butt if he complained. The old timers would have loved that and then they would have backed a brother CIB.

Months went by and I was spending all my time in the foundry even hanging out in the pattern shop on second shift learning how to make patterns. When they had a gassing problem with a casting I was right in the middle of the conversation soaking up every bit of information I could. If there was a shrinking problem or they were trying to prove a new casting I was in the middle of it. An education you could not get in any school. One day Big Stoop didn't show up for work and the foreman is going nuts. He's one molder down and doesn't know what he's going to do. One of the old timers said "put the kid in Stans place". I got the arm pointing to Big Stoops station and I was their in an instant working my tail off. Big Stoop was out for three days and for the next three days I was officially a foundry man. My casting count was higher and the quality of the castings was better than Big Stoop's. On day four Big Stoop shows up and as he makes his way over to his station the foreman hands him a shovel. He was told that " the kids got your job". Big Stoop was fuming and I had a big laugh about it. When the first brake came I went up to the foreman and told him. "Look you don't know anything about me and this is just a stopping off place. You better give Big Stoop back his job. He has a wife and kids and he need this job. I then went around to all the old timers and shook hands with them and told them it was time. They all wished me the best and told me that they would miss me but they were all glad that I was going on to other things. I should mention that although I left the foundry I didn't stop learning about casting metals. I joined the American Foundry Society (AFS) in 1969 and today I'm still a member getting my monthly publication of Metal Casting for the last forty five years. For some reason I have it in the back of my mind that some day I may have to build a small foundry in my shop and cast something for a new project. I had many different jobs in many different disciplines and had my head in a book most of the time when I wasn't working. It wasn't all work and no play. This kind of life style isn't for everyone but I wouldn't have had it any other way.

It seems like I spent most of my time when I was young having to prove that I knew what I knew. I always figured that I would prove it by building what I built and let the so called experts sort it out. When you build a product everyone is looking for a mistake. I've never understood why people will listen to a critic. A person with very little talent and absolutely no ability. That's just like how many people have I known over the decades that will come up with a good idea and will ask people that have never been successful at anything and have failed at everything that they have ever done what they think. I always tell them to look for successful people and ask for their guidance and their thoughts. How many times have I been in the design process and someone will be telling everyone how it won't work. Then when it does work they just go back to the bar and their beer.

When I turned twenty seven I built my first Sweet SL-110 sidecar. My good friend and co body designer the late Dick Lyon was ten years my senior. We were young back then and had no idea how it was going to shake out. Today I'm seventy years old and I'm having the time of my life. With a lifetime full of designing all kinds of neat things today I'm retire
d and back building my Sweet sidecars for a select few. Every sidecar is hand built and custom designed to fit each customers needs. Last year I was building one unit every ten days but have cut my production to one per month. I can built a complete sidecar in twenty six working hours. The design is very simple and I have reduced the number of parts in the frame from thirty four to twenty two on some units. We have a small group of sidecar nuts in my area and we try to go out every good day above 60 degrees and ride even if it's just up to the local corner and back to the shop. These are all new sidecar owners just in the last year and a half. My earlier projections were to build twenty five new sidecars in two years. I did that in the first year. As long as my health holds out and I still have the passion I hope to build many more in the years to come, but you never know.

Thanks for reading and asking.

Johnny Sweet PE.

A great story!!! At 79 I am semi retired but still working for a few of my old time clients and riding my hack as well as my trike. Never quit doing the things you love to do!!

that is actually a great story and it is making me inspired a lot

Mr Johnny Sweet you are truly amazing!!!! it turns out that I have had one of your sidecars sitting in my barn for almost 5 years -an SL-440 I'm nearly certain. I have wondered many times about how I was going to install it, and to what kind of bike. I mainly ride Harley's these days, but I'm one of those that likes nearly all makes and models. I believe that I am about to make an extended "loan" of my rig to my cousin with a physically challenged son. I cannot wait to see it attached to his Road King. After reading these stories I'll never sell it for sure!!! P.s., my rig has the original upholstery, the chrome hubcap, original windshield and is in fantastic shape ALL THE WAY DOWN IN THE TEXAS PANHANDLE!!! I will post pics soon. I had no idea that I had such a special sidecar just sitting in the barn.