Has anyone ever tried to dampen the bounce of a standard Harley sidecar tub with any kind of shock absorber? Thanks, Dave
There's some input in the archives here addressing installing a damper to hold down the bucking TLEs. Probably in the tech forum. There were also photos of the install.
Lonnie
Hi Dave. Yes, I'm the one who built the dampers for the Harley sidecar as you well know. You have been sent the pictures. I built two types of dampers. One uses a front shock from a Camaro and the other one uses a friction damper with leather discs with adjustable tension.
The early Harley-Davidson sidecars were fitted with canvas straps that ran under the frame to act as a snubber. Harley left this feature off when they began building the fiberglass bodies in the 1960's. With a damper on the tub, the stability and tracking are very much improved. The sidecar tub will ride flat more or less at all times.
As to the shock version, one difficulty is that 50-50 pure hydraulic shocks are fairly hard to locate. They are still popular with hot rodders and other kinds of car enthusiasts as opposed to the modern gas shocks. The gas shocks work well on a typical car where there is a lot of weight. On a sidecar, however, the gas pushes the nose of the sidecar up a bit more than I would like.
The friction damper model that I built was really ideal. It is a true 50-50 unit with equal damping up and down and it's adjustable. It took a bit of machining and welding but it does work.
I think that adding some form of snubbing or damping would be a good idea for almost any sidecar tub unless it comes from the factory that way.
Harley-Davidson also quit building the 46 pound cast iron sidecar weights that they used to have. I think they dropped them around 1995 or so since I didn't see them in their accessory catalogs after that. The nice thing about their weight was that it sat on the outer spring, just inside of the wheel. That way, with 46 pounds placed at that point, it was very effective. Since I couldn't locate one, I built my own out of 1/4" steel and filled it with lead. It was very effective. I can't imagine running a sidecar without some weight in that area.
With a damper and a weight, the Harley sidecar is really transformed into a much more stable, tractable unit. I recommend these things for anyone, especially with a Harley rig.
Hope you liked the photos. I posted those a few years ago.
GNM
GNM109, can you send me those pics also, of the damper and the weight? ive also been considering the same thing as I am now in the process of re building a 96 harley sidecar and attaching it to a 98 Ultra Classic
Keorange57 - 6/23/2012 3:54 AM
GNM109, can you send me those pics also, of the damper and the weight? ive also been considering the same thing as I am now in the process of re building a 96 harley sidecar and attaching it to a 98 Ultra Classic
PM me your email......
