Hi I am new to the Forum and new to sidecars too. I have an 87 Z1000 police Kawasaki with a velorex sidecar. I have ridden it a little and had a blast. The sidecar has a cable to operate the sidecar brake but it is not connected to anything. I know a lot of people say you don't need a sidecar brake but I am curious if any one ever got one working on these bikes.
any advise gratefully received
Steve
Steve,
Some have hooked up the Velorex brake on earlier bikes with mechanical drum rear brake and when used in Europe it is necessary. The bikes there that use OEM Jawa/Velorex sidecars also have a rear mechanical brake with the same wheel/drum/ shoes and swept volume in both the sidecar and bike wheel. Matched they work pretty good.
Trying to match a mechanical drum brake to a hydraulic disc brake borders on the impossible as the effiency ratios are so far off.
Also with the asymetrical side car rig the loadings on the sidecar tire and traction are a constant variable.
Some have rigged a separate brake pedal for use off road and some others have rigged the Velo brake for a parking brake
which is also required some places.
I would advise against trying to integrate it on your bike. you have adequate braking without it.
Lonnie
Thank you for such a great answer. I had a feeling that would be the answer.Yes it stops fine even with only the front brake as my rear brake needs attention right now. What do most sidecar riders do about parking?. just leave it in gear or put it on the center stand if it has one. Sorry for lots of noobie questions
Steve
Always park in first gear or it may roll off.
Lonnie
Hack'n - 4/15/2010 11:55 AM
Always park in first gear or it may roll off.
Lonnie
Your sidecar rolling away can be quite embarrasing.Plus your fellow sidecarists will never let you forget it. Don't ask .
THe more brakes I have the faster I can drive.Seriously,I woudnt want to drive without a sidecar brake.What I have now are 2 SMALL calipers on the sidecar wheel.One is plumbed to the frontwheel,
the other has a brake pedal alongside the rear wheel brake pedal and also underneath it.A good test of brake performance is on the downhill gravel road to my house.I can stop the rig very quickly
and straight with or without load in the sidecar.Without any sidecar brake any hard braking lccks the frontwheel and I skid to the left.Worst case scenario you spin out to the left,rear wheel lifts
and you roll over the sidecar nose.IT has happened.
It takes a bit of trial and error to find the right combination of cylinder diameter,disk diameter,leverage,brake pads etc.You can also use proportional valves>I tried that but found it not necessary.
That is my 2 cents worth.Three braked wheels are better than two.
Gary
I am not huge on sidecar brakes in most cases but we have done quite a few setups with them. The large sidecars on wings and such do well with them. The HPS rigs do well with them. Many other rigs do okay but consistancy in a panic situations can be somewhat of a concern.
When we do brake a sidecar wheel I prefer a seperate self contained system when possible with a means to manually adjust brake bias to the sidecar wheel. This can be done with a seperate pedal that has a part running under the rear brake pedal of the bike. Between the two is an adjustment that will allow more or less sidecar rbake to be dialed in.
The other preffered method is to plumb the sidecar brake into the REAR brake of the bike. Why the rear? On bikes without integrated braking systems plumbing top the rerar wheel will allow the driver to utilize the front brake in hard cornering to increase th eslip angle of the rear tire and gain cornering speed. Some have learned this technique and many have not but it is a good way to get through a right hander quickly.
Plumbing into the front brake is done by some and also works okay under less agaressive riding.
This sidecar bra' debate' has gone on for a very long time and will no doubt continue to surface from time to time. Safety is best acquired when braking can be made as consistant as possible under the worst panic conditions. No matter which system one has with or without brakes he or she would be doing themselves and their loved ones a huge service to practice some hard panic braking exercises under various conditions to get to know what their particular outfit will do when a real emergency arises. Getting to know your skill limits and trying to increase them through practice and also getting to know the limits of your particular outfit are good things for all the sport of sidecaring !!
Claude ,I agree with you on many points,but I do not see the concern about panic brake situation.An overdimensioned sidecar brake might do some strange things.That is why I use two separate
small calipers on the sidecar.The rig pulls to the right only if I activate only the sidecar brake,but the rig moves straight with frontbrake(coupled to sidecar) and straight with front and rear and sidecar brake.And its neat to do a hard u turn in your driveway or on a logging road with sidecar brake only.I hade a hard time slowing down and steering on steep downhill logging roads without
sidecar brake.And I like the idea of having three separate hydraulic circuits.It takes some effort to set this up but considering the time and money put into sidecarrigs it seems to be worthwile.
There is a lot of information about sidecar brakes in the german magazine Gespannfahrer.The majority of german rigs have sidecarbrake,some of them very sophisticated integral systems.
Gary
Storch,
If you have your brake setup how you like it and you know what it can and cannot do under various conditions then just ride the thing and smile 🙂
