Hi All, I took up riding at 50, having misspent my youth skydiving and scooting around the sky in an ultralight. My 1st bike was a '82 Honda CB750 beater I bought to learn on. 6 months later, the wife and I bought a '76 GL1000 and Cyclemate trailer which we tooled around motorcycle camping in VA and NC for a year or so before moving up to a used '88 GL1500 and bought a new Liesure-Lite m/c camper. That was in 2000. In '04 I bought a new GL1800, and the Wife put a Champion Daytona 2+2 on the GL1500 so she could get out from behind my helmet. We road those up and down the East Coast, Key West to Americade. After 4 years pushing her hack, not raked, around mainly on mountain twisties she bought herself an '08 GL1800 and had it triked. For the past 6 years she has towed the camper while I've stayed on two wheels. Having piloted her sidecar rig, and ridden her trike a bit, when I felt the GL1800 was getting a bit heavy for me, she was not shocked when I told her I was going to hang a sidecar on my GL1800. We found a good deal on a one-owner '02 CSC Friendship III last month, and I've got the car and my bike down in Monroe, NC at "A Wing & A Chair", rebuilding the front end, installing the final drive and "take-off" parts from my wife's conversion, and waiting on the mount that Jay at DMC is fabricating. Going to run a Michelen Run Flat on my drive wheel, an Avon "Trike" on the front. Really looking forward to pushing my rig around locally here in central NC before taking on the twisties off the Blue Ridge Parkway this spring. I've enjoyed "lurking" for a couple of days, and thought I'd say "Hey".
Will right back at you and welcome.
Wings with a chair are a natural. Plenty of power for interstate cruising or a cross country jaunt, as you already know.
Are you looking at plumbing in an auxiliary fuel tank?
Welcome aboard.
Welcome! I rode my wife's Gl1800 to have Doug turn it into a trike several years ago. I'm pleased to hear that you picked the best for your sidecar install.
Tell Doug anf LouAnn Hi for me. Al Davis, Lawrence, KS
Doug McCracken, "Wing & A Chair", rigged my Wife's Daytona 2+2 back in '04 and then built her Trike in '08. He and LouAnn are great people. As I joked with him last week, after two hacks and a trike he's certainly building his repeat business. I live about an hour and a half North of him, which puts me about an hour South of the Blue Ridge Parkway. Besides his sidecar and trike work, he's one of only two I'll let work on my Wing. I'll say "Hey" for you when I'm down at his shop next week.
Hadn't considered plumbing in another tank. Wife's Trike gets 30-35 mpg, and I figure to get comparable. Of course, we'll be looking at SDS (Sidercar Delay Syndrome) at each gas stop, but hey, It's a ride, Not a Race.
Welcome Tourist!
Nice to have you join the party, Tourist! Hard to believe that screen name wasn't already taken--it's a good one! Hope you figger out how to post pics on this forum (a skill that escapes many of our members) because I'd love to see some shots of you and your missus tooling around the Carolinas.
I like to think I'm pretty knowledgeable about tires so when you mentioned the Avon Trike front tire, which I'd never heard of, I had to look it up especially since I thought I was familiar with all the Avon tires and even once went to a tire seminar presented by Suki Fahey from Avon. Turns out it only comes in two sizes, neither of which fits a BMW (my only area of expertise), so I guess that's why I never stumbled across it before. LOL. Be sure to post up about how it works for you--ride, longevity, cornering traction, that sort of thing.
But then you say yer gonna mount a run-flat as your pusher. I've never had a run-flat on my rig, or on any of my cars, so I'm wondering why you'd choose to go that route? I mean, obviously, because you can run on it flat, but I mean other than that. Are there any performance or ride characteristics that make it better or worse than a comparable non-runflat tire?
I've done some reading about run-flats and never saw anything compelling me to try one. I run car tires on my rig, and carry a tire patch kit, a compressor, and a scissors jack, so I can fix my flats on the fly. This has worked for me so far OK. Just looked for a pic of me fixing a flat, but could only find this one, which is a pic of my rig last summer two minutes BEFORE I got a flat going down that grade you can see in the distance. 105 degree day, so that flat was no fun!
Thanks for the welcome. I've always run Dunlop E3s, and in going "dark" on the Wing/Chair I relied on input from friends and reviews from Darkside forums. One very close friend and riding buddy who's been dark for 6 years scoffed at the idea of the run flat claiming it added 14 pounds over the Bridgestone he swears by. The reviews, even on Amazon for this tire were impressive, and as for the 14 pounds is nominal considering I'm hanging a big car on a GL1800 with all it's hp and torque. The Wing is a road bike, sure, I've ridden, and will ride on gravel and stone, but the Wife and I are pavement hogs as opposed to the ADV crowd. We don't envision ourselves being more than 20 or 30 miles from services where we can have a tire repaired. I wasn't aware the Avon Trike tire was as limited in scope as you say, it will be interesting to see if the offer it in more sizes. Pics will be forthcoming as we ride. BTW, we moved from Puyallup to NC in '95 after I retired from the Army. The riding weather is a whole lot better down here.
